The family of a man who died two years ago after being shot more than a dozen times is suing Columbus, as well as the officers who shot him.
Antwan Lindsey, 45, died on July 8, 2023, after police shot him multiple times in the stairwell of an apartment building on the city’s East Side.
Lindsey’s sister, Renatta Lindsey, filed the lawsuit July 7 in the Cincinnati branch of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, accusing the officers and Columbus police of using excessive force.
The lawsuit is seeking at least $75,000 in relief, including compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorneys’ fees, according to the complaint filed by attorney Kenneth P. Abbarno of the DiCello Levitt law firm in Mentor.
“CPD’s toleration of and failure to discipline officers who engage in excessive force against African Americans, even when the force results in the City paying monetary civil rights settlements, is evidence that Plaintiffs’ injuries are traceable to the City’s custom of permitting excessive force, and it is evidence that the City has acted with deliberate indifference in failing to supervise its officers,” Abbarno wrote in the suit.
None of the officers involved has been identified publicly. The lawsuit names Columbus, police Chief Elaine Bryant, public safety director Kate McSweeney-Pishotti, four shooters, 15 John Does and Sgt. Jonathon Goodrich.
The lawsuit says Lindsey had surrendered to police and placed his gun at his feet with his hands in the air when officers shot him with a Taser and fired more than three dozen rounds at him. An autopsy found 15 police bullets struck Lindsey, many of them on the right side of his body.
What led to Antwan Lindsey’s shooting?
Around 8 p.m. on the day of the shooting, a man went into a Walgreens store at 3015 E. Livingston Ave., and told a Franklin County Sheriff’s deputy who was working on a special assignment that he was concerned about Lindsey. Police said after the shooting, Lindsey was reportedly upset because he thought his car, which had been towed, had been stolen.
The deputy told the man to call 911 because the apartments where Lindsey was located fell within the Columbus police jurisdiction. The man told the deputy that Lindsey was shooting a gun. The deputy went outside to get into his cruiser, and body camera footage shows two loud noises are heard, which the deputy identifies as gunshots. The deputy then got into his cruiser and drove about ¼ mile to the Bexley Commons Apartments.
Body camera footage released by the sheriff’s office shows the deputy parking his cruiser in the driveway area of the apartment building, and more gunshots are heard on the footage as the deputy gets out of the cruiser.
The deputy radios, according to the body camera footage, to dispatchers that he was being fired upon. Lindsey is visible when the deputy arrives, standing near the entrance to 3110 E. Livingston Ave., and then goes inside.
Body camera footage shows the deputy taking cover and trying to clear a jam or malfunction in his handgun while giving at least 32 commands to Lindsey to put his hands up. About 12 Columbus police officers arrived at the scene to assist and are seen on various body cameras released by the department checking different areas of the apartment building.
The officers found Lindsey in a basement stairwell with a door into a hallway partially open. Lindsey is seen on the body camera footage standing inside the door, with only a portion of his body and one hand visible on each side, according to the body camera video. Officers had approached Lindsey from the hallway, where they could see the right side of his body and right hand, and on the stairs, where officers could see his left hand and left side of his body, footage shows.
Body camera video shows three officers who were in the hallway giving Lindsey verbal commands to put his hands up. More than 90 seconds before officers opened fire, one officer is heard yelling that Lindsey had a gun. The video shows another officer asking about 20 seconds later if Lindsey had a gun because they couldn’t tell.
A still image from an officer’s body camera included with the lawsuit shows Lindsey with his hands raised to about his chin height and what appears to be a gun by his feet.
What did the investigation into Antwan Lindsey’s shooting reveal?
Investigative documents released by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation show two fired 9mm shell casings were found on the outside steps of the apartment building and ballistically matched the handgun police said they found near Lindsey’s body.
A Franklin County grand jury declined to indict any of the officers involved.
The lawsuit says both sets of officers are audible on the body camera footage, giving verbal commands, and the body cameras from the officers in the hallway hear the officers in the stairwell yell “Taser.”
Following the grand jury’s decision, the BCI released the case file to the public. Several of the officers who shot said they did so after hearing what they thought was a gunshot and seeing Lindsey appear to lunge toward the officers in the hallway.
Those officers said, after reviewing body camera footage, they determined the noise they heard was the Taser deploying, and Lindsey’s movement was in response to being hit with the Taser.
“After reviewing the footage, it appears that the suspect had dropped or placed his weapon on the ground on the other side of the door. I could not see that from my position in the hallway. It also appears that what I believed was a gunshot immediately before discharging my weapon was the pop of the Taser being deployed,” one officer wrote in a statement given to BCI. “On the footage, I can hear officers yell ‘Taser, Taser’ but during this incident I did not hear the Taser announcement.”
“Immediately before I fired my weapon, I heard a pop that I believed was a gunshot and I believed that the suspect had just fired at the officers in the south stairwell/stairway and that he was turning to fire at us,” another officer wrote in his statement. “I knew that prior to my arrival the suspect had fired at a Franklin County Sheriff Deputy. I do not believe I had any other reasonable alternative.”
An autopsy report from the Franklin County Coroner’s office showed Lindsey had been shot 15 times, with several gunshots striking him in the head and upper body. The autopsy report also showed Lindsey had a metabolite of cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as PCP, in his system at the time of his death.
City Attorney Zach Klein’s office said the city is reviewing the lawsuit and has no additional comments because it is pending litigation.
(This story has been updated to add a comment from the city attorney’s office.)
Reporter Bethany Bruner can be reached at bbruner@gannett.com or on Bluesky at @bethanybruner.dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Family of Columbus man police shot 15 times sues city, officers
Reporting by Bethany Bruner, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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