The city of San Diego agreed to pay $30 million to the family of a 16-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a San Diego police officer while the teen was fleeing gunfire from another person, in what the family’s attorneys say is believed to be the largest settlement stemming from a police killing in U.S. history, it was announced Friday.
Konoa Wilson’s parents are suing the city and the officer who shot him, San Diego Police Department Officer Daniel Gold, in connection with the teen’s shooting death on the night of Jan. 28.
According to the family’s lawsuit, the boy was fleeing shots fired at him by another person when he encountered Gold, who shot him twice in the back “instantly, without warning.” Konoa was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later.
Lawyers representing the teen’s family say the settlement figure recently reached dwarfs the previous largest police murder settlement of $27 million paid by Minneapolis to George Floyd’s family.
The settlement amount was revealed in the San Diego City Council agenda released Friday and will be formally considered by the council on Tuesday. City representatives could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
“What happened to Konoa was a catastrophic failure of police action,” Wilson family attorney Nick Rowley said in a statement. “A 16-year-old was running for his life. He was neither a threat nor a suspect, but a police officer shot him in the back and only saw him for a second before deciding to pull the trigger.”
In tram station surveillance footage released by the police department earlier this year, Konoa can be seen running after another person pulls out a gun and opens fire on him on the station’s west platform.
Warning: Some of what you see in the video may be difficult to watch. Authorities released video of a police shooting that killed a 16-year-old boy on January 28.
Gold and another officer were in the area responding to an unrelated report of an assault when shots were heard.
The boy can be seen running down a hallway leading out of the station and exiting onto Kettner Boulevard just as Gold ran into the same hallway.
Body camera footage shows the officer immediately shooting the teen at point-blank range. Rowley said Gold shot the boy “before even announcing who he was.”
After he was shot, the video shows the boy screaming and running briefly before collapsing. Officers then began performing CPR, and while doing so, they found a gun hidden under the young man’s clothing near his right thigh, according to police.
There was no indication in the video that the teen fired his gun during the incident or was holding it when Gold, a member of the police department for two years, opened fire on him.
Rowley said the boy had the gun for self-defense because he had recently been attacked and assaulted by gang members. The attorney said the gun was believed to be unloaded, but more importantly, it was not brandished when he was shot.
The 16-year-old was shot and killed by a police officer last January. At the time, he was running away from someone who was shooting at him in the Sante Fe Depot center. NBC 7’s Dave Summers reports.
“This agreement brings some semblance of accountability, but not closure,” Rowley’s statement continued. “You don’t get closure when the people who are supposed to protect you shoot your child in the back for doing nothing wrong.
“We hope Konoa’s story sends a message nationwide: Cities will pay a high price when officers break the law and take a life without justification. We hope the city of San Diego will ensure this never happens again.”
The boy was murdered three months before his 17th birthday. In a statement, the lawyers said he was “an only child and his parents lost their only child.”
Police said the person who shot Konoa, described only as a 16-year-old, was arrested a little more than a week later.
