DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050031

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Maddry 

                                            LENGTH:   71 lines

PITY THE POOR GUY STRONG-ARMED BY DEPUTIES IN HIS HOME

TALK ABOUT things that go bump in the night. . . . It looks as though Halloween came a little early for Howard Painter, 64, of Stanley, Va.

Mr. Painter - who has been bedridden since 1989 because of a car accident - still has the bruises and a swollen arm to show for it.

At about 9:30 p.m. Oct. 13, Painter was in a hospital bed in his living room watching the Monday Night Football game on TV.

Watching the game was about as much exercise as Painter gets these days. He cannot even turn over in bed unassisted because of the accident injuries.

There were two small lights on in the room along with the TV and a table by his hospital bed covered with various medicine bottles.

The first clue that something scary was happening in the house occurred when Painter's wife, Doris - who was watching another TV upstairs - heard her husband screaming, ``Ow! Ow! Ow!'' She said she was frightened. ``I thought about getting a gun but didn't,'' she said. She tiptoed down the stairs instead, into a darkened bedroom next to the living room.

She had been there a few moments when someone shined a flashlight into her eyes. ``What are you doing in my house?'' she asked.

She saw several men wearing camouflage clothing standing by the hospital bed where her husband lay.

The men said they were sheriff's deputies and told her they were looking for a man carrying a pistol. ``They warned me to stay put and not to go outside,''she recalled.

Doris Painter told the deputies they were in the wrong house and were probably looking for the house of a neighbor two doors away. (She says a man living at that residence was later arrested.)

The three deputies were in the house about five minutes before departing, she said.

It was then that her husband told her two of the men had tried to handcuff him, twisting his arms so severely as he struggled against them that he was in pain.

After the deputies left, she said, her husband continued to complain about his injuries and could not raise his right arm. She said she phoned her daughter, who works at a beauty salon, and told her, ``They have hurt your daddy's arms.''

By that time, she said, the deputies had blocked off the road leading to the neighborhood and her daughter could not reach their house.

She said her daughter phoned Page County Sheriff E. M. ``Pap'' Sedwick and told him what had happened. Sedwick responded on the phone to her daughter by saying `Oh, s--t!,'' she claimed.

Either Sedwick or someone in his department phoned the rescue squad, which sent a vehicle to their house. Howard Painter was treated for injuries at Page Memorial Hospital and released.

Both of Painter's arms were bruised during the incident, and his right arm is still swollen after having been wrenched behind his head, Doris Painter says.

She claims that one of the deputies, Joey Buynar, returned later that evening and apologized for what had happened. But the next day, she said, deputies were claiming they had been attempting to evacuate people from the neighborhood.

``If they were doing that, why would they tell us to stay put?'' she asked.

She said the deputies had entered the house without warrant or permission and simply began wrestling with her husband's arms, trying to put the cuffs on.

``They treated him like a criminal,'' she said. ``And he can't even sit up in the bed by himself. He's just dead weight. And he couldn't hurt anybody.''

Her husband - a former Stanley policeman - intends to sue, she said.

Sheriff Sedwick declined to comment last week but said that if the Painters sue, ``you'll hear our story in court.''

Should be a treat listening to the Sheriff's Department version of that little pre-Halloween trick played on Howard Painter if the case reaches court. I'll bet it's a beauty.

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