Seattle, Washington, was found liable on Thursday for the shooting death of a 16-year-old during Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, multiple media outlets reported.
A civil jury reportedly awarded more than $30 million to Antonio Mays Jr.’s family after the teen was fatally shot on June 29, 2020, inside the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), where police allowed rioters to take over several city blocks. Jurors declared Seattle “negligent” in its handling of the unrest, which involved withdrawing police and surrendering the land for rioters to form an anarchist commune with its own armed security forces.
The city attorney’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The boy’s father, Antonio Mays Sr., reacted emotionally to the verdict in the courtroom while being hugged by his lawyer, footage from The Post Millennial shows.
“I can’t say that it feels good,” he said at a press conference later, The Seattle Times reported. “I can’t say that it feels complete because it doesn’t. I’m thankful for the verdict, I’m thankful for the success, but it doesn’t feel like a resolve.”
Mays Jr. was killed inside a Jeep he was allegedly stealing, The Seattle Times reported. The gunfire that killed Mays Jr. and injured a 14-year-old was the breaking point that prompted city leaders to order the dispersal of CHAZ, the paper noted. The shooting led to no arrests and went unsolved.
The city previously reached settlements with business owners whose property was ransacked during CHAZ and with city government whistleblowers who alleged retaliation after revealing that former Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages related to the crisis were deleted, according to The Post Millennial and KOMO News.
The 14-year-old wounded alongside Mays Jr. also sued Seattle over severe medical problems the shooting caused, including brain injury, but he withdrew the case in August, KUOW reported. The city argued that memory loss impaired his ability to testify accurately.
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