DENVER (AP) — Destinee Thompson was speculated to be on her strategy to lunch along 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.
Annoyed by the district legal professional’s resolution final 12 months to not cost the officers, Thompson’s household filed a wrongful dying and extreme power lawsuit on Tuesday towards 5 officers from the Denver suburb of Arvada who had been current when she was killed.
“I would like their badges,” mentioned Francis Thompson, Destinee’s father. “She’s 5-foot tall, seven months pregnant. … You’re a grown man and also you’re threatened by that? You don’t deserve to have the ability to put on a badge.”
They allege Destinee Thompson’s race — she’s half Hispanic and half Native American — performed a task in her being focused. Officers had been searching for a suspect described as white or Hispanic.
“If this was a prosperous white particular person moving into her car, they’d by no means have stopped her,” mentioned Siddhartha Rathod, an legal professional representing her household.
In a press release Wednesday, the Arvada Police Division mentioned the household’s lawyer has mischaracterized the occasions surrounding Thompson’s dying, and the company plans to mount a vigorous authorized protection.
Police spokesperson Dave Snelling mentioned the officers had been justified in utilizing lethal power as a result of they believed Thompson’s actions posed an imminent menace.
The episode came about on Aug. 17, 2021, when officers responded to a report of a lady who had stolen from a Goal 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 Publish.
Whereas the outline of the suspect included a white tank prime — which Thompson was sporting — it additionally specified a chest tattoo, which Thompson didn’t have.
Officers famous that she did not precisely match the outline however determined to cease her to rule her out, in keeping with the lawsuit. Thompson saved strolling when police requested her to cease, instructed them she wasn’t the particular person they had been searching for, and mentioned she didn’t have an ID to indicate them.
The police spokesperson mentioned the officers had “cheap suspicion” to consider Thompson might have been concerned within the theft and had been subsequently justified in contacting her.
Thompson’s household strongly disagrees.
“She’s completed nothing flawed … and she or he is confronted by these policemen and doesn’t wish to discuss to them,” Rathod mentioned. “You’ve got the best to not discuss 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 below it, and finally shot and killed Thompson. Her unborn little one additionally died.
Thompson’s household alleges the officer who fired may see that the opposite officer hadn’t been hit or dragged by the automobile.
“Not a single one of many different officers thought it was essential to shoot,” added Rathod in an interview. “It is a homicide of a pregnant girl.”
Snelling, the police spokesperson, mentioned the division stands behind its officers’ actions.
“Thompson sadly selected to interact in conduct that the officer moderately believed posed an imminent menace to the lifetime of one other officer,” Snelling wrote. “He selected to make use of lethal power to cease that menace.”
Snelling added that the company later found Thompson had warrants out for her arrest and the post-mortem discovered illicit medicine in her system.
Rathod and Francis Thompson dismissed the police point out of these warrants, saying it would not justify the officers’ actions and that police on the scene didn’t find out about her background through the interplay.
“All they knew was this girl didn’t match the outline of the shoplifting suspect,” Rathod mentioned.
For Francis Thompson, who described his daughter as keen to assist others and fast with fun, it feels just like the police division is utilizing Destinee’s previous to justify her dying.
The grief hasn’t abated, he mentioned. Every single day there are moments when he cries, he mentioned. “It’s onerous for me to discover a objective in numerous issues anymore.”
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Bedayn is a corps member for the Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.