White, Prairie County Officers Searching for Suspect Accidentally Enter Police Officers`s Home

A Searcy police officer says after White and Prairie County sheriff`s deputies accidentally entered her home looking for a suspect -- she just wants an apology from the White County Sheriff. Friday afternoon, the deputies were serving a federal arrest warrant when there was a mix-up with directions -- landing them at the wrong address. They were looking for 43-year old Richard Attaway, on a federal arrest warrant for explosives and weapons charges. "For safety reasons we went ahead and acted as quickly as they did," said White County Sheriff`s Det. John Slater. The information that Prairie County Deputies had for Attaway`s address and a neighbhor pointed them toward the home of Searcy Police Officer Ann Owens. But Attaway`s home is actually several hundred yards down the road. Once detectives entered Owens` home, no one was home and they realized their mistake. Detectives say the descriptions of the two homes matched. "There was a gate, come up to a second gate, went through the second gate, there were dogs, a dark colored pick-up truck," explained Slater. Owens, herself being a police detective, says although there was no damge to her home, the situation could have been worse. "Our daughters had just left 3-5 minutes before that, they actually met the caravan of officers going," she said. But she says the it also could have been avoided, had officers noticed their surroundings. "There was a plaque hanging outside our residence that had my husband`s name on it, my name," she said. White County Sheriff`s deputies say they were avoiding a more dangerous situation for themselves and in the process made a mistake. "If he was observing us and was aware we were there, that we were more or less setting ourselves up for an ambush of some sort," Slater explained. But everyone is thankful the worst did not happen. Deputies say they had to move quickly because of their suspect`s alleged history with explosives. He`s the same Richard Attaway that was arrested, along with his wife, in Prairie County in January, in what was called the county`s biggest math lab in the last decade. His wife, Angela, says none of it is true. Meanwhile, Officer Owens says she did receive an apology from the Prairie County Sheriff.