Missouri deputies break my wife's arm and aim an assault rifle at me during violent, terrifying "eviction"

This looks a lot like the assault rifle that was pointed at me.
It's called a BERYL 96.

Sheriff deputies broke my wife's arm and aimed what appeared to be an assault weapon at me during an "eviction" last Wednesday at the apartment where we've been living for the past year in Springfield, Mo.

Doctors told my wife, Carol, that the large bone in her upper left arm was broken when Greene County deputies assaulted her as she tried to retrieve some of our belongings from inside the apartment. She is scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning--and we are told it will be a five- or six-hour procedure--although it already has been postponed twice.

Damage to Carol's arm apparently is so severe that a trauma surgeon has been scheduled to operate. The procedure probably would have already been completed if doctors felt an orthopedic surgeon could handle it.

How severe are Carol's injuries? That's unclear at this point, but she was given oxygen, possibly because she was in danger of going into shock, and doctors treated her for possible blood clots. Her neck and shoulders are sore from apparent whiplash, and she shows signs of having a concussion from being thrown violently to the ground. At least three officers surrounded Carol during the assault, and I saw one officer yank both of her arms in an outward and upward motion. Her left arm, the broken one, is so badly bruised that doctors asked if she had been on blood thinners. Her right arm also is extensively bruised, and I'm still not sure how it wasn't broken, too.

The incident began when about six deputies burst through our door at about 1:45 p.m. on September 9. Jim Arnott, the sheriff of Greene County, was on the scene, and he yanked me out of a chair and placed handcuffs on me, even though I was sitting with my hands folded and posed no threat to anyone. Carol was looking out our peephole to see what was going on outside and was slammed against a wall when officers burst through the door.

One of the officers trained what appeared to be an assault weapon on me, and I think at least three or four handguns were pointed in my direction. A construction worker near the scene witnessed much of the incident and said he saw what appeared to be two AK-47s with officers on the premises. I'm not an expert on assault weapons, but I'm not certain this was an AK-47. It was, however, not your standard rifle, and it appeared to be the kind of automatic or semi-automatic weapon that is designed to blow away multiple people in quick order. The rifle looked a lot like the one shown above, which is a BERYL 96.

As officers mauled Carol on the ground, handcuffing her and breaking her arm, Arnott stood a few feet away and pointed at the violent scene and said, "She assaulted a police officer." That's a classic example of how far some law-enforcement officers will go to lie and cover up wrongdoing.

We're not aware of any charges filed against Carol, although she was taken to the Greene County Jail before someone finally realized that her complaints about soreness in her arm might be serious. She apparently was not booked into the jail, and she was transported to one hospital for X-rays that revealed the break and then to another, where the surgery is scheduled.

I witnessed the assault on Carol, and I feel certain none of the officers involved has a scratch on him (or her)--one of the officers was a woman. I was seated in our car in the driveway and could hear Carol say, "I'm trying to . . . . " I lost track of her words after that, but she told me that she was trying to get our cat's litter box. The notion that she assaulted anyone is preposterous.

Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott

We were renting the apartment from a company called Cowherd Construction. As officers were busy assaulting and handcuffing Carol and me, a crew from Cowherd removed our possessions and placed them at the edge of the street. A neighbor told us that he witnessed multiple Cowherd crew members placing various items, which belonged to us, in their vehicles. Based on the neighbor's words, we were the victims of rampant theft.

A number of good-hearted individuals helped us place furniture and some of our valuables in the neighbor's garage. But a lot of personal belongings--clothes, wedding photos, my wedding ring, and much more--seem to be gone. As I type this, I'm not sure what Carol and I have left--the clothes on our back, our kitty kat Baxter, miscellaneous furniture, and not much else.

I put the term eviction in quotation marks above because the entire procedure that led to Carol's injuries was unlawful. I will explain further in an upcoming post, but I was the defendant in a rent-and-possession lawsuit styled Trent Cowherd v. Roger Shuler. I had timely filed a notice of appeal, and under Missouri law, that puts a stay on execution of an eviction notice. Neither officers nor the Cowherd crew members had lawful grounds to be on the property last Wednesday (September 9), but they broke through our door, pointed multiple weapons at me, and broke Carol's arm anyway. And if our neighbor's words are on target, they also caused many of our personal belongings to be stolen.

All of this explains why Legal Schnauzer has been quiet in recent days. I will update readers on Carol's condition and related events, hopefully in a few days. My access to a computer right now is limited, so I will not be able to post comments and respond to e-mails as quickly as I usually do.

Information about Trent Cowherd v. Roger Shuler, the underlying "eviction" case that led to all of this, is available at the following link:

Your Missouri Courts

You can click on "Litigant Name Search" and type in my name to call up both the trial-court case and appellate case that, by law, put a stay on the eviction. Most of the case information can be viewed by clicking "Docket Entries."

Here is a portion of the docket entry for the trial-court case. It clearly shows that I filed a notice of appeal on 9/8/15, and the eviction took place anyway on 9/9/15:

09/10/2015 -- Return Service - Other
Landlord Execution returned served/posted by the GCSD. /st

09/09/2015 -- Correspondence Filed
Missouri Court of Appeals files Correspondence to acknowledge receipt of a notice of appeal./bh

09/08/2015 -- Motion to Quash
Defendant filing pro se files Motion to Quash Execution. /kbt
Certificate of Mailing
Notice of Appeal saved and attached in PDF format for Attorney(s) to retrieve from secure case.net. Notice of Appeal sent electronically to Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District/KC
Notice of Appeal Filed
Roger Shuler Defendant Pro Se Files Notice of Appeal. /KC
Filed By: ROGER SHULER
08/31/2015 -- Judgment Entered
Formal Interlocutory Judgment executed and filed. Rose/kj Judgment for possession. Rose/kj

I will explain the law behind this in an upcoming post. For now, I have a wife whose upper arm--in the words of her doctor--is "snapped in two." Getting her on the mend is priority No. 1. Meanwhile, many of our possessions have been lost or stolen, and the roof over our head might soon disappear.

Those familiar with my bogus arrest and incarceration in Alabama know that the price is high for journalists who dare to report accurately about legal and political corruption. The price has just gotten higher--and the terrorism campaign against us officially has crossed state borders.