SECOND VICTIM OF CHOP SHOOTING THAT LED TO $30.5M VERDICT FILES SUIT AGAINST CITY OF SEATTLE
Lawsuit Filed in King County Superior Court Alleges City Created CHOP, Abandoned Its Own Protocols, and Left a 14-Year-Old Child Without Emergency Services
SEATTLE, Feb. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A lawsuit asserting 12 causes of action was filed in King County Superior Court on behalf of Robert West against the City of Seattle. Robert, now 20, is the sole survivor of the June 29, 2020 CHOP zone shooting that killed sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. A King County jury recently awarded the Mays family a historic $30.5 million verdict against the City.
The City, through its Former Mayor Durkan, told the world that CHOP was a "summer of love" with a "block party atmosphere" — "not a lawless wasteland" but "a peaceful expression of our community's collective grief." Robert West was fourteen years old. What the City didn't tell him was that someone had already been killed inside CHOP, that response times were three times as long as normal, and that the City had stopped sending police and paramedics into the zone.
On June 29, 2020, Robert was shot multiple times by armed strangers who had appointed themselves CHOP "security." No ambulance was ever sent for him. Good Samaritans drove him to the hospital themselves because the City of Seattle wouldn't.
He lost his right eye. Part of his skull was replaced with a titanium plate. He has a seizure disorder and traumatic brain injury. His injuries have left him permanently disabled. More than five years later, no one has been arrested and the Seattle Police Department has never interviewed him.
The complaint is supported by the City's own words: an email from Former Mayor Durkan calling an earlier CHOP shooting "foreseeable and avoidable" that "cannot be repeated" — nine days before Robert was shot; and the City's own admission that no officers were assigned to patrol CHOP that night.
"The jury in the Mays case told the City that when you abandon children, there are consequences," said Evan Oshan of Oshan & Associates (Oshan Law). "Robert West was in that same vehicle, shot in the same attack, abandoned by the same City. The only difference is Robert survived — and he lives with what the City did to him every single day. This lawsuit is about holding the City accountable."
The full complaint and exhibits are available in the media packet linked below.
Note: Robert West and attorney Evan Oshan are available for interview and comment via Zoom.
Media Packet:
Contact:
Evan M. Oshan
Oshan & Associates
[email protected]
(206) 206-6000 Voice/Text
SOURCE Oshan & Associates, P.C.
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