A King County jury has found the City of Seattle negligent in its response to a 2020 shooting near the Capitol Hill Organized Protest and ordered the city to pay more than $30.5 million to the family of Antonio Mays Jr. Jurors concluded that failures in the city's emergency response helped cause the teen’s death. The verdict lands more than five years after the June 29, 2020, shooting that left Mays dead and a 14-year-old passenger critically injured.
The award is split between the teen’s estate and his father, with roughly $4 million going to the estate and about $26 million to Antonio Mays Sr., after about 12 days of jury deliberations, according to The Spokesman-Review. The decision capped a monthlong trial that focused narrowly on one question: whether Seattle emergency responders failed to provide timely care.
What Jurors Saw Of The Immediate Response
In court, witnesses and video laid out a chaotic rescue scene. Volunteer medics and bystanders rushed in to treat the wounded while city ambulances and uniformed personnel waited outside the protest zone. Plaintiff experts testified that Mays’s fatal injury involved an obstructed airway that might have been cleared with faster professional care, while defense witnesses countered that his wounds were likely unsurvivable. Those competing accounts, and the frantic rescue attempts, were detailed at trial, as reported by KUOW.
City’s Defense And A Blocked Legal Strategy
Plaintiff attorney Evan Oshan told jurors, "The City of Seattle abandoned Antonio Mays Jr.," according to KUOW. City lawyers argued that Mays had been in a stolen Jeep and that, under Washington’s so-called "felony-bar," the city should be immune from liability. King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell ruled that jurors could not consider that defense, a decision that shaped how causation was presented in the courtroom, per The Spokesman-Review.
Unresolved Killing And The Wider CHOP Fallout
No arrests have been made in the shooting, and Seattle police continue to list the case as an open homicide, even as civil claims play out in public court. The verdict arrives against a backdrop of earlier CHOP-related litigation, with the city having previously paid roughly $3.65 million to settle business claims tied to the occupation, as reported by The Seattle Times. Local television outlets, including KING 5, carried live coverage as jurors deliberated.
Legal Implications
The civil verdict does not answer the central criminal question of who fired the shots, and any criminal accountability remains separate and unresolved. The size of the award is likely to sharpen debate in Seattle over first-responder protocols and the city’s liability when large, decentralized protests complicate emergency access.
