DENVER (AP) — Destinee Thompson was purported to be on her solution to lunch together with her stepmother in August 2021 when Colorado police, mistaking her for a theft suspect, fatally shot the pregnant mom as she fled in her minivan.
Frustrated by the district legal professional’s resolution final yr to not cost the officers, Thompson‘s household filed a wrongful demise and extreme drive lawsuit on Tuesday in opposition to 5 officers from the Denver suburb of Arvada who have been current when she was killed.
“I want their badges,” stated Francis Thompson, Destinee’s father. “She’s 5-foot tall, seven months pregnant. … You’re a grown man and you’re threatened by that? You don’t deserve to be able to wear a badge.”
They allege Destinee Thompson‘s race — she’s half Hispanic and half Native American — performed a task in her being focused. Officers have been on the lookout for a suspect described as white or Hispanic.
“If this was a affluent white person getting into her vehicle, they would never have stopped her,” stated Siddhartha Rathod, an legal professional representing her household.
In a press release Wednesday, the Arvada Police Department stated the household’s lawyer has mischaracterized the occasions surrounding Thompson’s demise, and the company plans to mount a vigorous authorized protection.
Police spokesperson Dave Snelling stated the officers have been justified in utilizing lethal drive as a result of they believed Thompson‘s actions posed an imminent menace.
The episode happened on Aug. 17, 2021, when officers responded to a report of a girl who had stolen from a Target and brandished a knife at an worker. A witness adopted the suspect to a close-by motel, the place police arrived. Thompson was leaving that very same motel to satisfy her stepmother, in keeping with the lawsuit, which was first reported by The Denver Post.
While the outline of the suspect included a white tank high — which Thompson was sporting — it additionally specified a chest tattoo, which Thompson didn’t have.
Officers famous that she didn’t precisely match the outline however determined to cease her to rule her out, in keeping with the lawsuit. Thompson stored strolling when police requested her to cease, informed them she wasn’t the individual they have been on the lookout for, and stated she didn’t have an ID to point out them.
The police spokesperson stated the officers had “reasonable suspicion” to consider Thompson might have been concerned within the theft and have been due to this fact justified in contacting her.
Thompson‘s household strongly disagrees.
“She’s done nothing wrong … and she is confronted by these policemen and doesn’t want to talk to them,” Rathod stated. “You have the right not to talk to police.”
Thompson, sitting in her minivan and surrounded by 5 officers, locked the doorways and refused to get out, repeating, “It wasn’t me,” the district legal professional wrote within the 2022 letter explaining their resolution to not cost the officers.
One officer smashed the passenger window with a baton, and Thompson backed the automobile up, hitting a police car parked behind her. She then drove ahead over the curb and onto the highway.
One officer started capturing, in keeping with the district legal professional’s letter, as a result of he believed one other officer was struck by the automobile or being dragged underneath it, and finally shot and killed Thompson. Her unborn youngster additionally died.
Thompson‘s family alleges the officer who fired could see that the other officer hadn’t been hit or dragged by the automobile.
“Not a single one of the other officers thought it was necessary to shoot,” added Rathod in an interview. “This is a murder of a pregnant woman.”
Snelling, the police spokesperson, stated the division stands behind its officers’ actions.
“Thompson unfortunately chose to engage in conduct that the officer reasonably believed posed an imminent threat to the life of another officer,” Snelling wrote. “He chose to use deadly force to stop that threat.”
Snelling added that the company later found Thompson had warrants out for her arrest and the post-mortem discovered illicit medication in her system.
Rathod and Francis Thompson dismissed the police point out of these warrants, saying it doesn’t justify the officers’ actions and that police on the scene didn’t find out about her background in the course of the interplay.
“All they knew was this woman didn’t fit the description of the shoplifting suspect,” Rathod stated.
For Francis Thompson, who described his daughter as keen to assist others and fast with amusing, it feels just like the police division is utilizing Destinee’s previous to justify her demise.
The grief hasn’t abated, he stated. Every day there are moments when he cries, he stated. “It’s hard for me to find a purpose in a lot of things anymore.”
___
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.
Content Source: www.washingtontimes.com