A 98-year-old Kansas newspaper owner died after police raided her home over a story tip about a well-connected person

• Kansas police raided a local newspaper after it got a tip that a local restaurant owner had a DUI.
• Marion County Record publisher said the raid will have a "chilling effect" on the newsroom.

A Kansas newspaper owner is dead after police raided her and her son's home last week — a move the National Newspaper Association called '"unthinkable."

Joan Mayer, 98, was a co-owner of the Marion County Record with her son.

Eric Meyer, who is also the publisher of the Marion County Record, told the Kansas Reflector the message was clear after the raid: "Mind your own business or we're going to step on you."

"It's going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues," said Meyer, who was home with his mother at the time of the raid.

It will also have "a chilling effect on people giving us information," he added.

According to the Record, four police officers and three Marion County Sheriff's deputies raided the newspaper's office, Meyer's home, and a local politician's home. They took personal cellphones, computers, the newspaper's file server, and "other equipment unrelated to the scope of their search," the Record reported.

The Record announced Sunday that Joan Meyer had collapsed at her home on Saturday after becoming "stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief after illegal raids," according to The New York Daily News. Meyer was "otherwise in good health" before the raid, according to the report.

According to the paper, police presented a search warrant signed by a local judge, which said that identity theft had been committed against Kari Newell, a local restaurant owner, using equipment at the newspaper.

The Reflector reported that the raid followed a meeting with Newell and local Rep. Jake LaTurner, during which Newell kicked out the Record's reporters.

Following the newspaper's coverage of that meeting, Newell posted "hostile comments" about Meyer and the paper on her Facebook page, according to the Reflector.

A confidential source then contacted the Record with documents showing Newell had received a DUI and continued to drive her vehicle with a suspended license, putting her restaurant's liquor license in jeopardy, the Reflector reported.

The Record ultimately decided not to publish a story about Newell's DUI, which the paper verified with a state website, Meyer told the Reflector.

Meyer said he instead contacted police, who then notified Newell. Newell went to a city council meeting and incorrectly asserted that the newspaper had "illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive records," the Reflector reported.

After police raided the newspaper office on Friday, Newell posted a Facebook post where she admitted to receiving a DUI in 2008 and said she "knowingly operated a vehicle without a license out of necessity," according to the Reflector.

"Journalists have become the dirty politicians of today, twisting narrative for bias agendas, full of muddied half-truths," Newell wrote despite the paper never publishing a story about her DUI. "We rarely get facts that aren't baited with misleading insinuations."

John Galer, the chairperson for the National Newspaper Association, said in a statement Saturday that "for a newspaper to be intimidated by an unannounced search and seizure is unthinkable in an America that respects its First Amendment rights."

"Newsroom raids in this country receded into history 50 years ago," Galer said. "Today, law enforcement agencies, by and large, understand that gathering information from newsrooms is a last resort and then done only with subpoenas that protect the rights of all involved."

The Marion County Sheriff's Department declined to comment when reached by Insider on Saturday. Rep. Jake LaTurner's office did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.