This article originally appeared on WND.com
Guest by post by Bob Unruh
The government cannot take your property just because you were an innocent bystander to someone else’s alleged crime.
A family owned plumbing corporation in Illinois is being forced into court after cops confiscated a company truck when it was hit in a traffic accident, and have refused to return it to the owners. For more than a year.
The Liberty Justice Center has released a report on the fight against the Winnebago County sheriff’s office and the local state’s attorney, “for illegally seizing and indefinitely holding – for 15 months so far – the property of First Supply, LLC, simply because it was an innocent bystander to an auto accident.”
“The government cannot take your property without a warrant or warrant exception—let alone indefinitely and without giving you any way to get it back—just because you were an innocent bystander to someone else’s alleged crime,” explained Loren Seehase, of LJC. “We look forward to vindicating the Fourth Amendment rights of First Supply and all innocent crime victims and bystanders.”
Company lawyer Brittney Corrillaud said, “It was hard enough to have our delivery driver be involved in a fatal car accident. But to indefinitely lose our truck to impoundment hampers our ability to make a profit and pay our employees. We never could have expected that months would pass without getting it back, and now we pay thousands of dollars a month extra just to serve our customers. To add insult to injury, we’ve spent hours trying to retrieve our property only to be passed from person to person at the state’s attorney’s office, ignored by the prosecutor, and offered no support.”
The war was triggered in January 2024 when an alleged drunk driver ran a red light and crashed his vehicle into a First Supply delivery truck which was stopped, legally, at a stop light.
“Tragically, the driver’s passenger was killed on impact. First Supply was in no way responsible for the accident—but the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office seized First Supply’s truck from the scene as evidence, without a warrant, and without any exigent circumstances justifying the warrantless seizure,” the report said.
Then, in months following, while First Supply complied with the law enforcement investigation, the truck remained locked up.
At one point a sergeant said the sheriff’s investigators were finished with the truck, but still the truck was not released.
The traffic case even was dismissed without the truck’s release, and then a new criminal case was filed.
“During this entire process, neither the sheriff’s office nor the state’s attorney’s office contacted First Supply to return the truck. In fact, at no point during this entire ordeal has either office provided First Supply a process, procedure, or even a timeline as to when it can get its truck back,” the legal team charged.
So for 15 months the company has been paying for a truck it cannot use, as well as a replacement.
LJC said it now has a lawsuit pending over the confiscation of the vehicle, and it cites the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
Copyright 2025 WND News Center
The post ‘Indefinitely Holding’: Cops Seize Plumbing Company’s Truck Without a Warrant, Refuse to Give it Back appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.