HENDERSON (KTNV) — The city of Henderson reached a $638,476 settlement at Tuesday's council meeting with the man whose home was damaged during a fatal standoff more than two years ago.
The incident began on March 5, 2024, after an officer conducting a traffic stop was approached by someone who said he met a man who claimed to be a kidnapping victim. When interviewing the victim, officers determined the suspects were at a home near Cadence Vista Drive and Sunset Road. They arrested one suspect, but the second suspect, later identified as Trevor Cooper, ran away from the scene.
On April 12, officers located Cooper at a condo near Olivia Parkway and Galleria Drive, and according to police, Cooper refused to come out. This led to a barricade situation that lasted for 37 hours and ended after Cooper was found dead in the attic, police said previously.
MAY 2024 | Body camera footage, 911 calls shed light on fatal Henderson standoff:
Aaron Baca, the man who filed the lawsuit, states he was cooperating and assisting law enforcement to apprehend Cooper, who was barricaded in Baca's home.
According to the lawsuit, Baca states he had no association with Cooper or the criminal investigation and that Cooper was not a tenant, owner or authorized occupant of the property.
Baca was on the scene during the standoff and "cooperated fully and voluntarily with law enforcement," the complaint states, including giving officers access to interior Ring surveillance camera feeds installed inside his home and offering his garage door key to police.
However, the lawsuit claims the SWAT team refused the fob and instead "chose to forcibly breach the garage door, destroying it in the process." Baca's attorneys claimed that officers deployed several "CS gas canisters throughout the interior of the residence, saturating the property with chemical agents."
Baca's attorneys also alleged police flooded the home, tore out walls and compromised the roof, making the home "structurally uninhabitable."
Since the incident, Baca claimed he has not been able to live at his home, that he lost most of his personal belongings and the value of the property has gone down.
"The Property has suffered diminished value, even upon full restoration, due to the stigma of the incident," the lawsuit states in part. "Professional real estate agents have confirmed they would list the Property for significantly less than comparable units."
"I was pleased that we were able to come to a resolution on this subject. It was difficult for the entire community and that neighborhood," Mayor Michelle Romero said. "It was a particularly incident for the immediate adjacent residents that were displaced for a period of time."
WATCH | Mayor Romero and the police department spoke about the incident and the settlement at the council meeting:
In 2024, we asked the city for answers, including what the cost of the incident was, from personnel to property damage, and why the incident took more than a day to resolve.
At the time, we were told "our office/department does not track salaries of other agencies" and "there is no further information available as this is still an open investigation."
In addition, a city spokesperson told us at the time that the Homeowners Association is responsible for fixing the damage to the building, and property owners are responsible for fixing damage to their individual townhomes.
"While the city continues to maintain that this was for law enforcement response to a very serious public safety threat, there's always room for improvement, there's always lessons learned from that," Romero said.
