The Joplin Globe – by Sarah Okeson
GALENA, Kan. — The FBI plans to pay for damages to a Galena home where its agents and officers from other law enforcement agencies unsuccessfully sought a man wanted on felony charges in Missouri, said Cherokee County Sheriff David Groves.
Groves said he didn’t have an estimate of the damages at 1009 E. Fifth St. where multiple law enforcement agencies believed Doug Alexius, 40, who is said to be a member of the Joplin Honkies gang, had holed up. Groves said that Alexius was believed to be armed and in the attic.
Sheriff’s deputies, Galena police and agents with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the FBI served a search warrant about 9 p.m. Monday at the residence.
“The information we received indicates he was in the residence that morning,” Groves wrote in an email to The Joplin Globe. “Either that information was inaccurate or he left prior to law enforcement arrival. We have no reason to believe that he left the residence once a perimeter was established.”
The wait for Alexius to come out apparently ended about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday after authorities had gone in and determined that he was not in the house.
Windows at the house were broken out, and on Wednesday, clothes, mattresses and children’s toys were scattered about the yard.
Cherokee County property records list the homeowner as Juanita Lane. She could not be reached by the Globe for comment on Wednesday.
Groves declined to answer questions about why the house was damaged.
“As for why specific tactics were utilized or items removed, those questions would need to be directed to the teams involved in that action,” Groves wrote in an email to the Globe. “The teams utilized were from the KBI and FBI. The FBI indicated yesterday (Tuesday) that they would be paying for the damages to the home.”
FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the homeowner will have to file a claim to be reimbursed.
“We will pay for any damages that were done to the residence during the search for the wanted individual,” Patton said.
She also said items that were removed from the home would have been removed for officers’ safety or because those items could have been used by the suspect to conceal his location.
Mark Malick, the spokesman for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, referred media questions to Doug Younger, the team commander. Younger did not respond to an email or a phone call from the Globe.
Neighbor Vonda Macklin said she heard Lane tell police repeatedly that Alexius wasn’t in the home. Macklin said six children, ages 3 to 15, also lived there.
“Poor girl,” Macklin said. “It’s Christmas time. She has no home. What was hardest was that they destroyed the Christmas tree. They ripped it out of the window.”
Groves wrote that “law enforcement used the information they had at the time, believing it to be accurate, to make decisions that would mitigate risks to the community, officers or the public.”
“While we obviously would have liked to have removed this allegedly dangerous criminal from the streets, I’m satisfied that nobody was hurt in this effort to apprehend him,” Groves wrote.
Alexius, who authorities say is a member of a Missouri prison gang called the Honkies, is wanted in that state on charges of failure to appear in court on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a police officer and felony counts of attempted burglary, receiving stolen property, property damage, possession of controlled substance and resisting arrest.
The FBI apparently became involved in the case Tuesday in connection with the issuance of a federal warrant accusing Alexius of unlawful flight across the state line to avoid prosecution.
Court records for Alexius suggest that the Galena case, if he ever was actually in the house, could have been the fifth time in the past couple of years that he has managed to elude arrest. He currently has seven cases pending in Newton County Circuit Court in Missouri.
Globe efforts to obtain information regarding the status of any continuing efforts to apprehend Alexius were unsuccessful Wednesday.
Honkies
Authorities say the Honkies, a gang with white supremacist beliefs, has its roots in the Missouri prison system.
The Honkies? The FN Honkies? You got to be shitting me! Is this for real?