Neighbor Of Raided Busby Fundraiser: The Call To The Sheriffs Didn’t Come From Me!

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So who exactly did call in that noise complaint against a fundraiser two weeks ago for Democratic House candidate Francine Busby (CA-50) — the one that, through a bizarre series of events, culminated in a full-scale raid by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department? One of the host’s neighbors, it turns out, is very eager to clear her own name and say it wasn’t her.

I just spoke with with Jeannie Goodsell, a retiree who lives immediately adjacent to the residence (though the lots are very large — the houses are over 100 yards apart). The caller is believed by attendees to have been the same person who yelled obscenities and anti-gay slurs at the event — and Goodsell doesn’t want any confusion that this didn’t happen from her house.

She said there was no noise at all. “We were home. We didn’t even know that the party or whatever it was, the fundraiser, happened behind us,” Goodsell told me. “We heard the helicopters that night, but every once in a while helicopters do fly over these orchards, so we didn’t think anything about it.” She only found out what happened from reporters who came by her home to ask her about it.

“What started bothering us is, it showed up in print that people directly west behind them started harassing them and yelling things about gays,” said Goodsell. “We’re liberal Democrats — we have a Buddha on our table.”

“We thought our reputation was being ruined,” said Goodsell. So she called Francine Busby up, in order to make sure reporters knew the truth. Goodsell was not previously involved with the Busby campaign, beyond being a regular Democratic voter in Busby’s previous runs for Congress.

The thing is, Goodsell doesn’t really have any idea who made the call, either. Her neighbors on one side aren’t the type, she says, and her neighbors on the other side were on vacation at the time — and they aren’t the type, either. If someone had yelled obscenities from her backyard, she inspected the grounds and found no sign of anybody jumping over her fences or otherwise entering.

Goodsell called the Sheriff’s Department, as well, and asked them to exonerate her name to reporters. Sure enough, Sheriff’s Department Commander of Law Enforcement Services Michael McNally told us that while he cannot disclose who actually made the call — though it will come out eventually, after the department’s internal review of the incident — he can confirm that the call did not come from the Goodsell residence.

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