Family sues Seattle Public Schools over fatal, lunch time shooting of their son

Murphy-Paine, a varsity football player who was just days from graduating, was shot multiple times on June 6, 2024 while trying to break up a fight during lunchtime outside the school. Despite a year-long investigation, no arrests have been made in connection with his death.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in King County Superior Court by his father and estate representative, Arron Murphy-Paine, along with Amarr's mother, stepmother, and brother, argues that the school district failed in its legal obligation to protect students. The family claims that Amarr’s death was a foreseeable consequence of relaxed security measures, citing the school’s open-campus policy and a history of gun violence in the surrounding Central District neighborhood.

According to Seattle Police, Amarr was attempting to intervene in a fight between a current and former student when an unidentified individual accompanying the former student pulled a gun and fatally shot him. Surveillance video captured the incident. The shooter remains unidentified.

Amarr’s father spoke out after the shooting. “I want justice,” he said. “That is all I got to say. Get the justice for everybody that failed my son when I took my son to school and he got killed at lunch.”

The family’s complaint, obtained by The Seattle Times, outlines a troubling pattern of violence and insufficient responses by SPS. On the same day Amarr was killed, two other security incidents occurred at Garfield. In one, a student entered a classroom wearing a ski mask and fired an airsoft gun at a teacher, causing facial and upper body injuries. In another, a student fled school grounds after refusing to let staff check his backpack for a suspected weapon. That student was later placed on a safety plan requiring daily backpack checks.

The lawsuit claims that the school failed to follow its own security protocols in these instances, including notifying the district’s Safety and Security Department and contacting 911, as required by policy. It alleges these failures directly contributed to the fatal shooting later that day.

The shooting remains unsolved. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Seattle Police Department tip line at 206-233-5000.

Between 2020 and Amarr’s death, Seattle Police responded to nine reports involving dangerous weapons near Garfield High. The complaint argues that SPS consistently disregarded safety threats, enabling armed individuals to access school grounds.

In the wake of Amarr’s killing and other violent incidents at Seattle schools, public scrutiny has intensified around SPS’s 2020 decision to remove school resource officers from campuses following the George Floyd riots.

Many now question whether that move left students more vulnerable to rising school-based violence. In recent years, a 17-year-old girl was shot at a Garfield bus stop. In 2023, a student was shot inside Ingraham High School. In 2021, students at Ingraham were threatened with an AR-15. During the pandemic, a violent homeless encampment was set up on the campus of Broadview Thompson, and the district failed to act even when students returned to the building.

Despite this, the SPS board has resisted reintroducing armed law enforcement. Finally, at the start of the 2024-2025 school year, in response to increasing violence, the district hired 16 security guards and 15 safety and security specialists for campuses with high violence rates. These staff are trained in de-escalation, not armed, and will monitor high-risk times like lunch and class transitions.