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player ready...A man says in a lawsuit that he was falsely arrested after a Porter County dispatcher saw him at a bar and insisted he had a warrant out for his arrest.
According to a lawsuit originally filed in Porter County and moved Thursday to the U.S. District Court in Hammond, Richard Jendrzejczyk was making a delivery at West Point Lounge in Westville on Nov. 8, 2012, when Terri Wood, a Porter County dispatcher, confronted him about the warrant after recognizing his last name on his uniform.
The lawsuit claims Wood was drunk and started calling him “abusive names with foul language.”
Christopher Buckley and Blake Dahl, attorneys for Jendrzejczyk, say in the suit that he decided to stay so he could prove his innocence. However, when Westville police arrived, they found a 2006 warrant for his arrest from Porter County.
The lawsuit says the warrant had been withdrawn in 2007 and was no longer valid.
The police arrested Jendrzejczyk and eventually took him to the Porter County Jail. Jendrzejczyk says he was held there for six days with no hearing, the lawsuit says. When he was finally released, the lawsuit says, he was never given an explanation other than that someone from the Porter County Prosecutor’s office said he could be released.
Buckley and Dahl say in the lawsuit that they believe the prosecutor’s office delayed sending the release for Jendrzejczyk even after they learned there had been a mix up with his warrant.
Jendrzejczyk is asking for $150,000 in damages, plus legal fees.
Along with Wood, Jendrzejczyk is also suing LaPorte County, the LaPorte County sheriff, the Westville Police Department, Porter County and the Porter County sheriff.
LaPorte Sheriff John Boyd said he had not heard about the lawsuit yet and declined to comment. An attorney for Porter County and Wood could not be reached for comment.