“Not only did Seattle officials encourage the Chop Zone and the anarchy which ultimately led to the teen’s violent and painful death it was not even properly investigated or even acknowledged.”
An amended complaint was filed Wednesday on behalf of the father of one of the black teens who was shot and killed in the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in 2020. It names the former police chief and current fire chief as defendants in the wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Seattle, King County, the state of Washington, former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, and Councilmember Kshama Sawant for encouraging “lawlessness to reign.”
The amended complaint obtained by The Post Millennial has added former police chief Carmen Best and Seattle fire chief Harold Scoggins to the list of defendants listed in the complaint on behalf of the family of murdered teen Antonio Mays Jr. Mays died while trying to escape the CHAZ, also known as the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), int eh summer of 2020.
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View on Rumble“Not only did Seattle officials encourage the Chop Zone and the anarchy which ultimately led to the teen's violent and painful death," Evan Oshan, of Oshan & Associates, said in a statement to The Post Millennial, "it was not even properly investigated or even acknowledged, and Antonio Mays Junior never got the justice he deserves. This is heart-wrenching for the family to witness. The family deserves answers by all participants involved.”
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View on XAccording to the lawsuit, Antonio Mays Jr., 16, along with a 14-year-old boy, were shot by CHAZ “security” guards, who comprised a "makeshift police force” on June 29, 2020, while “trying to escape while being barricaded” by “CHOP Cops which were under the direction of Seattle City officials.” Seattle ceded control of the area to those self-appointed persons.
Seattle police said that rapes, robberies, and murders spiked 250 percent during the occupation, but the media still continue to push the narrative that it was a "mostly peaceful protest." Mayor Jenny Durkan notoriously said at the time that the CHAZ represented a "summer of love."
The suit laid the blame directly on the decision to abandon a precinct buildings of the Seattle Police Department to those who wished to create their own autonomous area, and cited Best’s culpability.
According to the suit, “On June 8, 2020, Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best gave a press conference in which she stated that the Seattle Police would try something new to keep protestors at bay after prior measures had been unsuccessful. She stated: ‘We’re not going to evacuate or abandon the East Precinct’ and continued ‘We will be hardening the East Precinct facility by boarding up the exterior windows, and applying fire retardant to the building exterior and installing fencing.’”
The suit contends that the city pulled protection for that neighborhood intentionally, and let lawlessness reign, abdicating its duty to maintain order and enforce laws.
“Despite Chief Best’s proclamation, on June 8, 2020, the City and SPD made the extraordinary decision to abandon the East Precinct entirely. The SPD boarded up the building, removed all valuables, and walked away," the suit continues.
“The City left behind at the precinct and in the surrounding areas large barriers that had been used in previous days to try to limit the movements of protesters and despite Chief Best’s words, the Seattle Police Department East Precinct became overtaken by protestors who vandalized and destroyed the precinct.”
“Predictably, almost immediately after the Seattle Police Department abandoned the precinct and the barriers, occupants used the barriers to block off streets in the area and create a ‘no-cop’ zone. Initially, the blocked off area extended to all streets within one block from the precinct and the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), also identified as the Free Capitol Hill, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) was born.”
In an exclusive interview, Oshan told The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, "I've had the opportunity to speak with former first responders, individuals who had first-hand knowledge of what was going on there and the fiasco that occurred... the first responders, the police officers that were there were really kind of hog-tied. They weren't able to do their job."
The complaint also cited correspondence from Durkan’s office from 2020 that said city officials were on site inside the zone “…to work [to] meet community needs including hygiene, sanitation, and safety. Utilities including Puget Sound Energy and SPU have been able to respond to the area for service. Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best had visited the site multiple times, and conversations had continued between City officials, organizers onsite for the CHOP, residents and businesses. … every day, Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, Seattle Department of Transportation Director Sam Zimbabwe, and Seattle Public Utilities General Manager Mami Hara have been on site.”
Durkan also stated that the city was “…committed to maintaining space for the community to come together, protest and exercise their first amendment rights.”
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View on XEarlier this year, the city of Seattle agreed to pay $3,650,000 in damages, which included legal fees, to business owners who filed a lawsuit after the deadly CHAZ damaged their businesses and properties and violated their constitutional rights.
The settlement came weeks after a federal judge imposed sanctions against Seattle following the revelation that city officials— including former Mayor Jenny Durkan, former police chief Carmen Best, and Fire Chief Harold Scoggins— deleted thousands of text messages during the armed occupation by Antifa and BLM rioters of 6 square blocks of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The judge in the case noted that Best deleted over 27,000 of those text messages by hand and an investigation revealed that Best’s phone was set to delete texts after 30 days which goes against city policies of preserving documents.
The investigation also revealed that Scoggins performed a factory reset on his phone several months after the CHAZ was dismantled that deleted all texts, even after legal documents were filed calling on him and other city officials to preserve all documents in preparation for lawsuits.
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View on XSome of the text messages that were able to be recovered, obtained by The Post Millennial, showed direct communication between Seattle officials, including Durkan and Scoggins, and Solomon "Raz" Simone, the self proclaimed "" of the autonomous zone.
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View on XEarlier this year, a group of Seattle firefighters sent a letter to the King County Sheriff, King County prosecutor Leesa Manion, and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell calling into question Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins’ ability to continue to lead the department following the discovery of evidence that he allegedly coordinated with the BLM/Antifa occupiers of the CHAZ.
According to the letter, the firefighters stated, “Chief Scoggins - while on duty, and in uniform, actively supported the perpetrators of the civil unrest and provided support, acting in the capacity as a city official. He ordered the removal of front-line emergency equipment from Fire Department vehicles and gave it to the people inside the 'autonomous zone'. This bypasses set protocols and directly puts patients in way of harm by removing trained personnel and placing undue burden on civilians to administer aid. Chief Scoggins also openly stated that he facilitated the movement of cement blockades into the street of the protest zone. This reckless act made it impossible for the Fire Department to come to the aid of those inside the zone.”
Scoggins also ordered firefighters to turn over tens of thousands of dollars in equipment to the occupiers of the autonomous zone who identified as medics, but did not provide any evidence of their ability to actually serve in that capacity.
Additionally, Scoggins coordinated barrier placement and other aspects of the zone with the occupiers. Correspondence showed that firefighters and medics were prevented from entering the zone and as a result were unable to treat victims of the violence.
Following the filing of the amended complaint, the Office of Police Accountability determined there may have been policy violation(s) surrounding the murder crime scene that was in need of further investigation. According to Oshan, “The murder crime scene was BOTCHED and regular police procedures and protocols were not followed following the murder of Antonio Mays Junior.”
In 2021, The Post Millennial revealed that Daniel Alan Baker, of Tallahassee, Florida, was suspected by zone activists and private security hired by residents and businesses in the zone, of being one of the shooters.
Baker claimed in a now-deleted Twitter account that the teens in the vehicle shot at him and other zone security members, but then added that he tried to de-escalate the situation which he said was started by the occupants of the vehicles, who he said were throwing fireworks.
Gunshots from various types of weapons can be heard in multiple videos of the shooting. According to witnesses and multiple streamers including Converge Media, zone "security" fired at the vehicle. Some of the zone security guards were even caught on video and audio in the aftermath of the shooting mocking the incident.
One person can even be heard saying, "What, you're nauseous? I'm the one who killed him."
Baker also said on Twitter that he confiscated weapons found in the SUV after the shooting and took the weapons to the zone’s "armory."
While in the CHAZ, Baker was interviewed for an article about the occupation and said, "I told them, if they really wanted a revolution, we needed to get AK's and start making bombs. No one listened to me." While in the zone, Baker posted pictures of himself as a sniper and said "If they are going to shoot and lynch us for protesting unarmed and peacefully, then we might as well die fighting."
At the time of the Mays’ fatal shooting, Baker claimed to be providing security for the zone and was allegedly one of the "medics" who administered aid to the gunshot victims.
The information on Baker was turned over to the Seattle Police and the FBI, but he has not been charged with any crimes related to the autonomous zone.
In March of 2021, Baker was found guilty and sentenced to 44 months in jail for attempting to rally activists to surround pro-Trump protesters with guns at the Florida state Capitol.
Baker had previously served in the Army before being dishonorably discharged. He went AWOL before his unit deployed to Iraq.
From 2008 to 2017, Baker was unemployed and homeless, occasionally working as a security guard, then eventually joined the People's Protection Units (YPG), a militia group in Syria, a sub-affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. The group combines revolutionary socialism, Marxism, and Leninism and is attempting to create a communist Kurdistan.
According to the FBI, Baker threatened violence and was trying to "recruit and train" "like-minded individuals" via social media to join him in his "anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism ideology." Baker threatened people he deemed to be "white supremacists," "fascists," or even just had opposing political views and also advocated for killing members of the US military.
Oshan also told Hoffman, "This young man, Antonio Mays Jr., went to Seattle to participate in the civil rights movement. He's a black individual who really went there for all the right reasons and in the end, he wasn't protected. He wasn't made safe....the heart of this is that our city leaders, our city officials really let the good people of Seattle down, and the individuals that came there to protest in a peaceful way."
"This whole situation needs to be looked into much more deeply. The discovery process needs to continue. Depositions need to be taken. Questions need to be answered by the city officials, the former city officials, the leaders, and we need to ultimately bring the individual individuals responsible for the murder."