A jury on Thursday ordered the city of Seattle to pay more than $30 million over the unsolved, fatal shooting of a teenager at the “ Capitol Hill Occupied Protest ” zone, which arose in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.
The King County jury returned the verdict following 12 days of deliberation, finding that the city was negligent in its emergency response to the shooting of Antonio Mays Jr., 16, and that that negligence caused his death, The Seattle Times reported.
Because first responders wouldn’t come to the protest zone, witnesses tried to bring Mays by private vehicle to get medical care from paramedics. They tried to flag down an ambulance that drove away from them, and it was about 24 minutes before they met with medics in a parking lot.
Attorneys for the family argued that Mays might have survived if his airway was properly cleared sooner. The city argued that Mays, who was shot in the head, was unlikely to have lived and that the emergency response was not to blame for his death.
Seattle was ordered to pay $4 million to Mays’ estate and $26 million to his father, Antonio Mays Sr., who became emotional and hugged his lawyer as the verdict was announced.
Racial justice demonstrators enraged about Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police took over eight square blocks in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in June 2020, creating a protest zone called “CHOP.” It lasted three weeks after the city police department abandoned its nearby precinct, earning derision from President Donald Trump, who claimed a large section of the city had been taken over by anarchists.
Following two shootings at or near the protest, including Mays’ death on June 29, then-Mayor Jenny Durkan and the police department dismantled the zone.
Mays was shot in a stolen white Jeep near the protest zone with a 14-year-old also in the vehicle. A livestream from the scene captured the shots and the aftermath — but did not show the shooter. Witnesses said on the livestream that armed protesters guarding the protest zone’s barricades had fired at the Jeep. No arrests have been made nor charges filed.
Mays traveled to Seattle from southern California, where he left a note for his father saying he was joining the civil rights movement. He did not tell his father where he was going, only that he wanted to make him “proud.” Mays Sr. filed a missing persons report with the Los Angeles Police Department the same day he found the note.
Less than 10 days later, Mays was dead. The 14-year-old, who was also shot, survived after witnesses brought him to a hospital.
King County Superior Court 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 — at the time he was killed. Even if the city proved Mays had stolen the Jeep, O’Donnell ruled, there’s no proof that he was killed because of it.
In a statement Thursday the city attorney’s office called the death a tragedy and said it was considering its legal options.
