Seattle ordered to pay over $30 million in CHOP teen death lawsuit

Seattle jury awards over $30M after fatal 2020 CHOP shooting of teen

A King County jury ordered the City of Seattle to pay more than $30 million over the unsolved, fatal shooting of Antonio Mays Jr., 16, during the summer 2020 protest period known as the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, or CHOP, according to coverage of the verdict. The jury found the city negligent in its emergency response to the shooting and that the negligence caused Mays’ death.

The verdict, reported by The Seattle Times and carried by the Associated Press, directed Seattle to pay $4 million to Mays’ estate and $26 million to his father, Antonio Mays Sr. Antonio Mays Sr. was described as becoming emotional and hugging his lawyer when the verdict was announced.

The dispute focused on the circumstances after Mays was shot in June 2020, when Seattle’s CHOP protest area was operating in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The coverage said the jury returned the verdict after 12 days of deliberation, following arguments over whether city officials’ actions during the emergency affected whether Mays could have been saved.

During the trial, attorneys for Mays’ family argued that Mays might have survived if his airway had been cleared sooner, according to the Associated Press report. The city argued that Mays, who was shot in the head, was unlikely to have lived even with an improved emergency response, and also argued that the emergency response was not to blame for his death.

Witness testimony described what the jury heard as delays in getting medical care. The report said first responders would not come into the protest zone, prompting witnesses to try to bring Mays by private vehicle to seek medical care from paramedics. It also said witnesses tried to flag down an ambulance that drove away from them, before meeting medics in a parking lot about 24 minutes later.

The coverage tied those events to the CHOP’s broader history in 2020, when racial justice demonstrators took over eight square blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in June after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. The protest zone lasted for about three weeks after Seattle police abandoned a nearby precinct, and President Donald Trump had publicly derided the area, according to the report. After two shootings at or near the protest, the coverage said then-Mayor Jenny Durkan and the police department dismantled the CHOP zone.

The Associated Press report said Mays was shot near the protest zone while in a stolen white Jeep that also included a 14-year-old who survived after witnesses brought him to a hospital. It said a livestream captured the shots and the aftermath but did not show the shooter, and that witnesses reported that armed protesters guarding barricades in the zone fired at the Jeep. It also said no arrests had been made and no charges had been filed.

In related proceedings, the city’s ability to argue about causation was limited by a King County Superior Court judge. The report said Judge Sean O’Donnell barred the city from presenting a defense that it was not liable because Mays was committing a felony—stealing the Jeep—when he was killed, and ruled that even if Mays had stolen the Jeep, there was no proof he was killed because of it.

In a statement after the verdict, the city attorney’s office called the death a tragedy and said it was considering its legal options, the Associated Press report said.