Seattle pays $500K to settle suit over man’s death

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle has paid $500,000 to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the father of a 19-year-old man shot and killed after police abandoned a precinct in the city during racial justice protests in June 2020.

The Seattle Times reports that Horace Anderson and the estate of his late son, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, filed the complaint in King County Superior Court in November 2021, naming as defendants former Mayor Jenny Durkan, Councilmember Kshama Sawant and the city of Seattle.

A judge approved the settlement in April.

The lawsuit alleged the city and those leaders encouraged participants in the so-called CHOP — Capitol Hill Occupied Protest — to break the law and “undermine the safety of others.”

The younger Anderson, who went by his middle name, Lorenzo, had graduated from an alternative youth-education program on June 19, 2020, and visited the CHOP zone the next day. He was fatally shot. A man has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the slaying.

The lawsuit alleged police were unable or unwilling to enter the CHOP zone to search for a suspect or conduct an investigation for hours after the shooting.