(NewsNation) — Police in Kansas have returned computers to a local newspaper after they were seized in a raid on the newspaper’s office that sparked concerns about press freedom.

The owner and editor of the Marion County Record, Eric Meyer, says he’s still perplexed by the entire situation.

“I don’t know why they did it,” he said of the police search and seizure Wednesday on “CUOMO.”

With a search warrant alleging the newspaper had a document they weren’t supposed to have, local police seized computers, cellphones and servers from the Marion County Record newsroom last week.

Police also raided Meyer’s home and the home of his 98-year-old mother — his longtime co-owner. She died the day after the raid due to the stress from the search in her home, Meyer previously told NewsNation.

He explained that the search warrant alleged the newspaper had committed identity theft and improper use of a computer.

Caitlin Vogus, deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, called the raid an “incredible attack on freedom of the press.”

“It’s truly shocking that the police would go to these extreme measures to raid a newsroom with the entire police force, just because some journalists were investigating information using a state government website,” she said Wednesday on “CUOMO.” “It’s beyond belief that a judge would approve this search warrant in the first instance.”

The prosecutor in Marion County has withdrawn that search warrant, the Wichita Eagle reported, and ordered local police to return the seized items. The decision came after the Kansas Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police.

Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey said in a statement that “insufficient evidence” existed to establish a “legally sufficient nexus between this alleged crime and the places searched and the items seized,” the Eagle reported.

The police searches appear to have been prompted by a complaint from a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell, who accused the newspaper of invading her privacy after it obtained copies of her driving record, including a 2008 drunken driving conviction. Newell says the newspaper targeted her after she ordered Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant earlier this month during a political event.

Meyer says a source gave the newspaper the information unsolicited and that reporters verified it through public online records. The paper eventually decided not to run a story, but it did report on Newell’s complaints about the newspaper’s investigation at a City Council meeting, where she publicly confirmed she’d had a DUI conviction and that she drove after her license was suspended.

The search warrant names Newell as a victim and lists the underlying reasons for the searches as suspicion of identity theft and “unlawful acts concerning computers.”

Meyer said a forensic expert will be reviewing the returned computer equipment to make sure nothing was tampered with or stolen.

He says he will probably take legal action and is fortunate that the paper isn’t his financial livelihood, as is the case for many local newspaper owners.

“Really, about all I can think this is was bullying, just for the sake of bullying,” he said. “Maybe it was also to find out something about an investigation we were doing, I don’t know. I’m not sure they were smart enough to figure that part of it out.”

NewsNation’s Stephanie Haines and Khrystene Coleman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.