Video Shows 98-Year-Old Kansas Newspaper Owner Cursing Out Cops Raiding Her Home Day Before She Died

The Marion County Record, a Kansas newspaper that has clashed with local authorities, released footage from a police raid on the home of its owner, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, a veteran reporter who died a day after the raid.

Before her passing earlier this month, Meyer shared ownership of the paper with her son — editor and publisher Eric Meyer — and lived in the same house. Surveillance video from the Meyer residence showed Joan confronting the officers about 90 minutes after they executed a search warrant and entered the house.

“Don’t you touch any of that stuff! This is my house! You a**hole,” Joan shouted at the cops.

The Record reported it was during this encounter that Joan was trying to use her Alexa speaker to call her son, who had gone to the paper’s offices to deal with the police raid that was happening there as well. Her son’s phone had already been seized at that point, since it could be heard ringing.

Using a walker, Joan went up to the cops and continued yelling “Do you love your mother? You’re an a**hole, police chief. You’re the chief? Oh, God, get out of my house.”

The searches into the Meyer house and the Record’s offices were prompted by allegations from a local restauranteur that the paper illegally obtained her driving record, which included a 2008 drunken driving conviction. The paper maintained that the information, which it did not publish, was obtained from a source. The information was obtained publicly, but the Record’s published reporting on the restauranteur was based on public records and a city council meeting where she confirmed details about her DUI conviction.

The day after the raids happened, Meyer died after a sudden cardiac arrest. The paper has attributed her death to the stress from the raid, and they cited a coroner’s report that allegedly listed “the anxiety and anger she experienced as a contributing cause of her death.”

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation took over the investigation into the situation after Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey withdrew the search warrants into the Record and its staff, saying there was insufficient evidence to justify them. The raids were condemned by media outlets and First Amendment advocates who saw the searches as violations of press freedom.

Watch above via The Marion County Record.