Jonathan Luksan's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Pierce County and two sheriff's deputies on August 17, alleging that deputies missed clear chances to de-escalate a mental health crisis before a deputy shot and killed the 42-year-old Marine Corps veteran outside a mobile home park near Tacoma in June 2024. The lawsuit, filed in Pierce County Superior Court by Thomas and Patricia Kishazi, names Deputies Scott Miller and Brandon Cargill and seeks unspecified damages, legal fees, and other court-ordered relief.
The shooting began as a domestic dispute call. According to The News Tribune, Luksan's sister called 911 on June 18, 2024, reporting that he had a knife during an argument among family members at a mobile home park in the 4800 block of 33rd Avenue Court East. Dispatch logs reviewed by the paper show deputies were sent out at 11:49 p.m. and arrived at roughly 12:05 a.m. Family members had reportedly been trying to get Luksan to a hotel before the confrontation escalated.
Per the outlet's reporting, deputies made contact with Luksan at 12:07 a.m. after he ran to a shed on the property, and by 12:11 a.m., shots had been fired — a span of roughly four minutes from first contact to gunfire, according to the Pierce County Sheriff's Office Blotter. Luksan broke a lock on the shed and also broke a garbage can during the encounter, the newspaper reported. He was holding a flashlight in one hand and a large knife in the other when deputies confronted him, and he carried a knife sheath as well.
A Standoff That Turned Deadly in Seconds
The lawsuit alleges Luksan told deputies he wanted to leave and refused to go back to jail — he had an outstanding bench warrant for failing to report to his assigned community corrections officer. At one point he dropped what appeared to be two knives, the suit states, and deputies told him he was under arrest. Cargill discharged two taser charges at Luksan, according to the filing, and stood roughly 11 feet in front of him when Miller believed Luksan intended to stab his fellow deputy.
Miller fired two rounds at Luksan from about 19 feet away, shooting him twice in less than a second, the lawsuit alleges, as Luksan attempted to leave the property. Deputies provided medical aid about four minutes after Luksan collapsed, per the same account. Luksan was later pronounced dead at a hospital on June 21, 2024, two days after being shot; the Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office officially ruled his death a homicide caused by a torso gunshot wound.
Attorney Tim Ceder, who represents Luksan's parents, said deputies failed to de-escalate the mental health crisis. His law firm requested body-camera footage of the encounter, but as of his interview with the newspaper, that request had not been fulfilled. The lawsuit also alleges deputies did not collect the knives, sheaths, and flashlight they saw near the shed, and that Miller and Cargill failed to use appropriate crisis-intervention techniques during the encounter.
Prior Criminal History and a Cleared Officer
Luksan had pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating a domestic violence protection order and was granted probation, the newspaper's reporting notes, though the lawsuit does not allege he had committed acts of violence during the June 2024 encounter itself. In May 2025, the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney's Office determined that Miller's use of lethal force was justified. Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett based that finding on body-camera footage, 911 calls, and witness statements.
That determination rested on Washington's statutory standard for police use of force. Under RCW 9A.16.040, as modified by Initiative 940 in 2018, deadly force by law enforcement is evaluated under an objective good-faith standard — whether a reasonable officer in the same situation would believe force was necessary to prevent death or serious injury. Deputy Miller was 34 years old and had served six years with the Pierce County Sheriff's Department at the time investigators examined the shooting, according to county investigative records.
Independent Oversight and a Statewide Training Gap
Officer-involved shootings in Pierce County fall under the jurisdiction of the Pierce County Force Investigation Team, a multi-agency independent body created under state Law Enforcement Training and Community Safety Act guidelines that includes non-law enforcement community representatives. An August 2026 report from the Washington State Auditor's Office confirmed that PCFIT met state independence standards in how it involved civilian representatives and preserved physical evidence during death investigations.
The lawsuit's core claim — that deputies skipped available crisis-intervention tools — lands against a backdrop of documented gaps in police training statewide. An April 2026 performance audit found only 16% of veteran law enforcement officers and 14% of new officers statewide had completed mandatory de-escalation and mental health training required under state law, according to The Seattle Times. Pierce County also operates a Co-Responder Program that embeds contracted MultiCare Designated Crisis Responders alongside deputies on behavioral health calls, a resource KING 5 News has reported is meant to divert people from jail or hospitalization during mental health emergencies.
Domestic violence calls make up a significant share of the sheriff's office's workload; its dedicated unit investigated 3,187 domestic violence reports in a single year, according to the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center. Under Washington's wrongful death statutes, RCW 4.20.010 and 4.20.020, the Kishazis' suit must be maintained by the court-appointed personal representative of Luksan's estate, with his surviving parents eligible to recover non-economic damages since he left no spouse or children.
The case adds to a string of Pierce County deputy-involved shootings that Hoodline has covered in recent months, including a Puyallup domestic call shooting and a fatal shooting during a Key Peninsula knife rampage. No trial date has been set in the Kishazis' case, and Pierce County has not yet filed a public response to the lawsuit's allegations.
