Andrij and Anna Jakymec, ages 89 and 84 respectively, were getting ready for bed one night when a gang of armed thugs busted through their door and started ripping their home apart. In a scenario that's become all too common in our once land of the free, the gang members were of course, Cook County sheriff's police on a drug raid.

Drug cops smash into wrong house, terrorize elderly couple

Cook County sheriff's police on a drug raid smashed into a Southwest Side house late Thursday night, terrorizing the elderly couple who lives there before admitting they had the wrong house.

Sheriff's police this morning said they targeted the home and obtained a search warrant based on information from an informant who had provided credible information in the past.

"As soon as we entered the home, we knew this couple was not involved in the activity alleged," sheriff's police spokesman Steve Patterson said in an e-mail. "Our officers immediately requested the assistance of an interpreter and, as a precautionary measure, a medic, while also asking the couple to contact a relative who could assist in the situation."

The search warrant for the home in the 5600 block of South Kilbourn Avenue cited suspected crystal meth, cocaine, guns and money. It also named a 23-year-old suspect whom the Jakymecs say they have never heard of.

With her husband already asleep, 84-year-old Anna Jakymec was just turning out the lights when she heard loud noises at the back and front doors about 11:30 p.m.

Her initial thought was that her 89-year old husband had fallen out of bed, but she realized something else was happening when she looked into the front room.

"I see maybe 20 guys come in and see the door knocked open," she said.

After breaking into the house only to find an elderly couple retiring to bed for the night, did common sense prevail? Nope. The armed men in state-issued costumes confined 84-year old Anna Jakymec, then proceeded to tear her house apart!

He estimated the damage to broken doors, locks and windows at up to $3,000.

"Everything was violently opened. Cabinets were ripped open, clothes and sheets were everywhere, and pieces of wood where the doors were rammed were all over the place," he said.

The Jakmec's are naturalized citizens, refugees from the former Soviet Union. It's a shame they never escaped the communist police state after all.

Raid on elderly couple's home brings back nightmares

When they were teens, Andrij and Anna Jakymec were whisked from their homes in the Soviet Union and put to work digging trenches as slaves of Hitler during World War II, their son said.

So when their front and back doors were bashed in and armed men rushed into their one-story ranch house on the Southwest Side late Thursday, the elderly couple suffered a terrible flashback. The raid was carried out by Cook County sheriff's police officers. And they targeted the wrong house.

Andrew Jakymec's father was a tailor who retired at 75 and is suffering from Alzheimer's disease and cancer. His mother was an elevator operator for Peoples Gas Co. and retired at 71. Since the 1960s, they've lived in the house just east of Midway Airport and stayed out of trouble.

"They believe in the American dream," their son said. "I am kind of saddened."

People love to claim we "won" the Cold War, but if we did, why does today's America look more like the old USSR than the old USA?

There's no war on drugs. Only a war on people.