An outraged Pembroke woman has lodged a formal complaint against the Police over a botched raid in which a houseful of elderly people and children were terrorised.

Ms Andrea Pemberton, who filed her grievance last week, claims that approximately 20 Police officers -- 18 males and two females -- stormed into her elderly grandparents' home at 47 Parsons Road in the mistaken belief that a bank robbery suspect was hiding out inside.

Ms Pemberton, who lives at 43 Parsons Road, said that a number of the officers were armed and wearing bullet-proof vests during the operation, which The Royal Gazette understands was in connection with the November 10 robbery of a Bank of Butterfield security van at the Mermaid Beach Club in Warwick.

Ms Pemberton also said that her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Grant, were in the house at the time of the raid with their daughter Helen Shirlene and three small grandchildren aged one, four and seven.

"Shirlene,'' Ms Pemberton said yesterday, "was trying to tell them that he (the suspect the Police were allegedly searching for) wasn't there, but they didn't believe her, and just pushed her out of the way.'' "I was really frightened,'' Ms Pemberton's grandmother, 73-year-old Mrs.

Marguerite Grant, said in a separate interview.

"I was watching TV in bed when they just pushed in the kitchen door. They didn't knock, and some of them fell against my bedroom door. I really didn't know what was going on. I just held onto my husband and started crying.'' According to Ms Pemberton, the suspect that the Police were looking for during the early evening raid was Mr. Harron Lee Powell Evans, a 20-year-old Devonshire man who was arrested in connection with the Mermaid Beach heist and charged on November 15.

Neither Ms Pemberton nor her grandmother, however, claim any connection to Evans.

"He is not (related to me),'' said Mrs. Grant yesterday. "If he is, I certainly don't know about it.'' In any case, the two women said that none of the 20 officers, who were led by Detective Inspector LeGay Farley, produced a search warrant before entering the Grant house. "They flashed it to either my daughter or my husband as they left,'' said Mrs. Grant. "I was still in the bed when they left.'' Yesterday, Police spokesman P.c. Gary Venning confirmed that Ms Pemberton had filed an official complaint on her grandparents' behalf, but he declined to discuss the matter in any detail on the ground that an internal investigation was under way.

"After the incident occurred,'' P.c. Venning said last night, "the Police gave an explanation of what had taken place (during the raid) and were of the opinion that the occupants (of the Grant house) were satisfied. In view of the fact that a formal complaint has since been made, it would be improper for any further comment to be given right now.'' In the view of Ms Pemberton, however, the explanation that the Police had provided to her grandparents was not satisfactory and even a formal apology wouldn't be enough.

"I'm going to sue them if I can,'' she said. "With all of the computers at their disposal, they shouldn't have been able to make that kind of mistake.'' Mrs. Grant added: "It just wasn't right what they did. And we weren't satisfied, that's for sure.''