$3 Million Settlement for Unarmed 13-Year-Old With Autism Shot by Salt Lake City Officer After 911 Call
After trial: Settled and paid; final. This was a federal claim under 42 U.S.C.
Won by Cutt Kendell & Olson.
A Salt Lake City mother called 911 asking for help getting her autistic 13-year-old son to a hospital during a separation-anxiety crisis. An officer chased the unarmed boy over a fence and fired eleven shots from 15 to 20 feet away. Six hit him. The city paid $3 million, the largest such settlement in its history.
What happened
On September 4, 2020 a mother in Salt Lake City called 911. Her 13-year-old son, who has autism, was in a separation-anxiety crisis, and she wanted help getting him to a hospital. That is what the call was for.
Police were dispatched to a report of a juvenile with a violent psychological issue. The boy ran out the back of the house and climbed a fence. An officer went after him and, from somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet away, fired eleven shots at him. Six of them hit.
He was unarmed. No weapon was ever found.
He lived. The bullets damaged his intestines, colon, bladder, stomach, shoulder and ankles. His left arm was paralyzed, and his doctors were not able to say whether it would recover. He is permanently disfigured, still has bullets in his body, and carries the psychological injury of it.
The family sued Salt Lake City and its police department in federal court on November 23, 2020 under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The complaint was not simply that the shooting was excessive. It alleged the officers had less-lethal options and did not use them, did not seek guidance from a supervisor, escalated the encounter with aggressive language at a child in a mental-health crisis, and turned off their body cameras during and after the shooting.
On September 20, 2022 the city settled for $3,000,000. A city spokesperson confirmed it was the largest amount Salt Lake City had ever agreed to pay in a case of this kind.
The family was represented by Nathan S. Morris of Cutt, Kendell and Olson. The boy's mother, Golda Barton, spoke publicly about the case throughout. He is not named here because he was a child at the time.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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