Questions about police raid in New Rochelle

NEW ROCHELLE (WABC) -- There are questions about how police responded to a report of an assault in New Rochelle.

Did they overreact and ransack a home without a search warrant?

"I was terrified and scared," said Fatima Stevenson, the victim's wife.

Fatima Stevenson was alone in her home with her two children early Monday morning when the banging on her door started. She wasn't properly dressed and her husband wasn't home.

"I heard knocking, banging on the door, so I went and I answered the door. I said, 'Who is this?' and they said, 'The police.' I said, 'I'm not sure if it's the police, because I am here with my kids so I don't want to open the door,'" Fatimah Stevenson said.

Eventually, she opened the door a crack and she says, armed police barged in to her home demanding to know where her husband was.

"I was shaking, terrified because they came in with the loud voice yelling, 'Where is he?' they were looking everywhere, though the clothes, under the bed, everywhere they were looking," Fatimah Stevenson said.

A 16-year-old girl who lives in his building, had accused Scott Stevenson of assaulting her, though her story quickly unraveled.

The 16-year-old girl was late coming home from a date with her boyfriend. According to police, when she got home, she turned over a garbage can, laid down in it, and started to moan loudly. When the police were called, according to the police, she told them that she had been assaulted by Stevenson and an unnamed friend.

Stevenson was at his mosque Monday morning, praying with several others, but the police didn't know that yet.

No one at the home of the teenage girl would talk with Eyewitness News, but records show charges have been filed against a teenage girl who lives there, for filing a false police report. Stevenson says police overreacted.

"Oh man. They handled it very poor, they handled it very unprofessional," Scott Stevenson said.

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