A teenager who was shot and critically injured in the final days of 2020’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) has filed a lawsuit against former and some current city officials, alleging dereliction of their duties.
Robert West was 14 and a passenger in a car driven by 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. when someone opened fire on their vehicle. Mays was killed and West was shot three times in the head, resulting in “tremendous pain and suffering and debilitating injuries” that included losing an eye, part of his skull and suffering a traumatic brain injury, according to the lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court on Monday.
The lawsuit names as defendants the city, former Mayor Jenny Durkan, former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and outgoing City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, as well as up to 100 unnamed defendants.
Tim Robinson, a spokesman for City Attorney Ann Davison, said the city has not seen the lawsuit and has no comment.
Police have never identified or arrested the shooter, partly because police did not respond to the shooting scene to interview witnesses or gather evidence until several hours had passed. A lawsuit by Mays’ family, filed by Evan Oshan, the same attorney representing West, alleges the shooter was a self-proclaimed civilian CHOP security guard.
That lawsuit is pending in superior court.
West’s lawsuit alleges the critically injured teen was pulled out of the bullet-riddled vehicle by volunteer medics because Seattle Fire paramedics “failed at their duty to provide much needed assistance” and refused to respond to the scene.
The lawsuit alleges the citizen medics loaded the severely injured West into a car and arranged by telephone to rendezvous with Seattle paramedics, but when they arrived “the paramedics did a U-turn and sped away in the other direction.” The lawsuit alleges the car carrying Mays had to chase the paramedics to get them to stop and treat West and transfer him to Harborview Medical Center.
Oshan, the attorney, said the now 18-year-old West is still in rehabilitation for his injuries.
The shooting, which occurred early on June 29, marked the second fatal shooting during the three-week Capitol Hill Organized Protest, which sprang up in the wake of national outrage over the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The police-free zone was set up after the Seattle Police Department abandoned its East Precinct during the protests.
The lawsuit alleges that West was “lured into the CHOP area by Mayor [Durkan’s] positive statements about the area on television” and says the teen “went to CHOP with the intention of participating in what he thought to be a peaceful protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
“Sadly, Mr. West soon realized that there was nothing peaceful about CHOP,” the lawsuit said. “In the early hours of June 29, 2020, Robert West was shot by CHOP ‘security/cops,’” a self-appointed security squad composed of people the lawsuit alleges were trained by Seattle police.
Mays was driving a white Jeep near the border of the protest zone when several shots were fired into the vehicle, mortally wounding Mays and striking West.
In addition to the lawsuit, Mays’ father has filed a complaint with the Seattle City Office of Police Accountability alleging the department failed to investigate the shooting and that department officials — including police Chief Adrian Diaz — have ignored attempts by the family to discuss the status of the investigation.
Oshan said that investigation remains pending.
The lawsuit filed Monday is similar to litigation filed against the city by the father of Lorenzo Anderson, the other young man shot and killed during a CHOP altercation. Anderson bled to death when police and firefighters refused to enter the protest zone due to safety concerns. Civilian medics loaded him into the back of a truck and took him to Harborview Medical Center, where he died. The city settled the Anderson lawsuit for $500,000.
Oshan said the West lawsuit will focus on the city’s decision to close the East Precinct, which had become a focus of protests and extreme police responses, including the use of tear gas and blast balls against nonviolent protesters.
The West lawsuit, like the Mays’ ongoing civil case, relies heavily on allegations that the city created the danger to the boys by helping establish the protest zone: allowing protesters to take over the area, using city barriers to block streets, creating a community garden at city-run Cal Anderson Park and providing sanitary services such as drinking water and portable toilets.
That argument was the basis of another lawsuit, filed by several Capitol Hill businesses against the former mayor and city, which city officials settled in February for $3.65 million. The settlement included an award of $600,000 in penalties for the deletion of thousands of text messages by Durkan, former police chief Best and other high-ranking city officials.
However, King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion, whose office oversaw a criminal review of the matter, in September concluded no laws were broken and that Durkan and the others likely mistakenly believed their text messages were being backed up, when they weren’t.
The West lawsuit alleges Durkan, Best, Scoggins, Sawant and up to 100 “John Doe” defendants overlooked the dangers posed by the lawlessness on Capitol Hill. The mayor and city leaders “knew the CHOP activity was dangerous to the health and safety of the community and needed to be controlled,” but failed to take action, the lawsuit claims.
