Woman, frustrated with skate park noise, sues Milton after arrest

HUNTINGTON – A woman is suing the City of Milton after she claims she was unlawfully arrested and denied her right to counsel.

David McKinney, Thomas Canterbury, Gary Lilly, Kyle O’Dell and Dean Waldron-Bishop were also named as defendants in the suit.

Tracy Lynnette Herz’s residence is across from a newly constructed skate park in Milton, according to a complaint filed Feb. 11 in Cabell Circuit Court.

Herz claims the noise from the skate park interferes with the quiet enjoyment of her property.

When workers were sent to remedy the situation, Herz went out to see what was being done to muffle the sound and picked up a piece of metal and “banged it down on a piece of the metal ramp that was the skating surface… simulating a fall from two feet of a skateboard whose athlete had effected a jump, for the purpose of seeing if… the so-called ‘remediation’ would actually muffle the sound,” according to the suit.

Herz claims shortly after, the defendants caused a criminal warrant to be issued for her arrest and three Milton police officers came to her house, arrested her and took her to the magistrate’s office in Huntington in handcuffs.

Magistrate Patty Spence set Herz’s bond at $15,000 with a cash payment of $1,500 and had her taken to the Southwestern County Regional Jail, according to the suit.

Herz claims the defendants denied her the right of counsel.

Spence was “importuned by her political friends to humiliate plaintiff by assuring that she would go to the regional jail, be booked and have a mug shot placed on the Internet,” according to the suit.

Herz claims the bail of $15,000 for a middle class mother of three children was utterly outrageous and could only have been the product of a corrupt conspiracy.

The defendants knowingly, intentionally and with malice did enter upon the conspiracy to humiliate Herz and to “hold her up to obloquy, ridicule and contempt” and to cause her to spend one or more nights in hail and have a mug shot posted on the jail’s website, according to the suit.

Herz is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. She is being represented by Richard Neely, Michael O. Callaghan and Joshua Martin of Neely & Callaghan.

The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Paul T. Farrell.

Cabell Circuit Court case number: 13-C-94