PORT LUDLOW — Jefferson County sheriff candidate Richard Brees waited outside his home Saturday evening as sheriff’s deputies with drawn guns searched his home and seized computer hardware.
The search warrant served on Brees was for the computer hardware he has been accused of using to send a neighbor threatening e-mails.
Brees’ trial is scheduled Sept. 5 on fourth-degree assault and third-degree malicious mischief charges in connection with a March 16 dispute with his neighbor, William Thayer.
“I thought this sort of home invasion is reserved for the likes of drug kingpins and murderers, not a citizen whose only crime is being presumptuous enough to run for office against the powers that be,” Brees said in a prepared statement released Tuesday.
Neighbor speaks
Thayer, who is disabled and has undergone brain cancer surgery, is a witness in the trial.
He said he opened his e-mail account on Aug. 18 to find two threatening messages that he said appeared to be from Brees, although they were forwarded to him from an e-mail address that was not that of Brees.
One e-mail said:
“Once I beat your sorry ass at trial, I’m going to hire someone to drive up and down the road all day long seven days a week and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Brees’ home shares a gravel road with Thayer.
Another message said:
“What does it feel like to know I’m going to file a lawsuit for damages! And turn you in to the state you fake! Hide behind your computer you coward.”
Thayer said Brees frequently drives 50 mph down the gravel road in front of his house.
He said he thinks Brees is trying to kick up rocks onto Thayer’s property.
Thayer said the ongoing dispute culminated on March 16 when deputies came to Thayer’s home after he called 9-1-1 to say that Brees had assaulted him.