MIDLAND, Texas — The "Midland Christian Five" have submitted an amended complaint to a federal judge concerning their lawsuit against the City of Midland and the three police officers involved in their arrests.
The original lawsuit, which was filed in late August 2022, claims Jared Lee, Dana Ellis, Matthew Counts, Gregory McClendon and Barry Russell were publicly humiliated by the police department and suffered severe damage to their careers and reputations.
All five were no billed by a grand jury on the initial charges of failure to report; however, Lee, Ellis and Counts were later rearrested and indicted on the same charges for a different situation in November.
The City of Midland filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit at the end of October. A judge granted the self-proclaimed "Midland Christian Five" the option to respond via an amended complaint.
In the new complaint, the Five's lawyers point out the new charges, which allegedly came from an incident preceding the original charges.
"However, when those charges are resolved, and Mr. Lee, Mrs. Ellis, and Mr. Counts are again exonerated, they will be suing based on those retaliatory charges as well," the amended lawsuit reads.
It also points out how a number of Midland citizens came out to call for an investigation into the MCS employees' arrests during the Nov. 15 City Council meeting.
In regards to the incident that resulted in the original arrest, the documents reiterate how the "more extreme-and totally false- account of the incident" that came about via a "bizarre and unfortunate game of 'telephone'" was fully investigated by the employees.
However, this led to the "Defendants’ vindictive and malicious campaign to prosecute Plaintiffs based upon the unsupported rumor." The lawsuit also claims it was "obvious" the police officers were upset that the Five had investigated the rumor before law enforcement had become involved.
The lawsuit also states that MPD officer Alonzo "took offense at Plaintiff Lee's request" that the school be served a search warrant before Lee turned over documents with "sensitive student information" to remain in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Similarly to the original lawsuit, the Five still allege that the arrest warrants "contained deliberate and reckless falsehoods" and that the police "perp walked" them off school campus.
Regarding the new charges, the lawsuit says the city, Sharp and Alonzo brought "new, retaliatory, and vindictive charges" against Lee, Ellis and Counts.
This incident allegedly involved a student striking another student with a bat, and all involved explained it was an accident. The student who was struck later sued the school and also never said the incident was intentional.
According to the lawsuit, this was never reported because it is not considered a reportable incident under law. Even then, the lawyers claim there were many others besides these three who knew about it and did not report, yet only those three were charged.
Therefore, because of these facts, the lawsuit further claims the new charges were retaliatory and the original arrests were made unconstitutionally.
At this time, there is no word on if or when the defendants in the lawsuit will respond or if the judge will move to dismiss the lawsuit now that the Five have filed their amended lawsuit.
To read the full lawsuit, you can see below.
