Father Stopped for Speeding Sues Illinois Police After Daughter's Ashes Taken from Car, Partially Spilled, and called "Drugs"
Bereaved father Dartavius Barnes is suing the city of Springfield, Illinois, after the police took his two-year-old daughter's cremated ashes out of his car, calling it "drugs," during a warrantless search for speeding.
The father said the police took his toddler's remains in a "desecration" when he was stopped for speeding and locked inside a police car.
Barnes was stopped by Illinois police in April 2020 and watched police officers search his car for drugs. The police officers told Barnes they discovered a small metal container in his vehicle that they believed was "ecstasy or meth."
Forty-seven minutes of bodycam footage was published publicly by two news channels, WICS WRSP, last week.
The bodycam footage shows Barnes telling the police officers the container held the ashes of his deceased daughter, Ta'Naja Barnes. In the bodycam video, Barnes is seen sitting in a squad car in handcuffs and saying "No, no, no, bro, that's my daughter. What y'all doing, bro? That's my daughter. Give me that, bro. That's my daughter. Please give me my daughter, bro. Put her in my hand, bro. Y'all are disrespectful, bro."
After Barnes is seen and heard via the bodycam footage telling the officers the container held his daughter's ashes, the officers are seen discussing whether or not to retest the ashes for drugs. Both Barnes and his father, who was present, can be heard begging for them not to touch the ashes.
The officers are shown and heard discussing the father's response to the urn, with one officer saying, "That guy knew it wasn't weed. He immediately got out and said it was the ashes of his granddaughter."
Barnes filed a federal lawsuit saying the officers unlawfully searched his car without consent or a warrant, then opened his daughter's urn and spilled ashes while testing for drugs. He is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages in a trial by jury.
The six police officers identified in the lawsuit include Colton Redding, Brian Riebling, Adam Westlake, Juan Resendez, Nicholas Renfro, and Regan Molohon.
The officers claim they did nothing illegal during the search and handling of the urn and Ta' Naja Barnes' ashes, saying they are "entitled to qualified immunity as their conduct was justified by an objectively reasonable belief that it was lawful."
The two-year-old girl was killed due to neglect by her now-convicted mother and the mother’s boyfriend in 2019.
Barnes' lawsuit will go to trial on August 22.
Recently, numerous false positives conducted by police officers during testing using portable drug kits have been reported across the country. Some of the false positives reported by police officers doing drug testing in the field include innocent items such as tortilla dough, cookies, deodorant, and even vitamins. In one case, a mother of four in Florida was sent to jail for five months after her store-bought vitamins falsely tested positive for oxycodone.
