Lawsuit: Seattle police shouldn’t have left suicidal woman with gun

The family of a young mother who told police she was raped and assaulted by a romantic partner have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in King County Superior Court after the woman killed herself with the man’s assault-style rifle.

The lawsuit alleges Seattle police officers violated state law and department policy when they left the rifle at the suspect’s home, where the woman had been staying in 2023. The officers arrested and eventually charged the man with felony domestic-abuse harassment and rape. However, they left the woman — who was intoxicated, in crisis and just two days out of the hospital after a previous suicide attempt — alone in the apartment with the firearm, which she eventually used to kill herself.

A state law passed in 2019 states police who respond to a domestic violence call and who have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed “shall … seize all firearms in plain sight or discovered pursuant to a lawful search.”

Seattle Police Department policy requires officers ensure that a trained crisis intervention-certified officer respond when victims are suicidal or in crisis and that they be connected with mental health resources. The lawsuit alleges that policy was not followed.

Moreover, the lawsuit alleges that gun — an AR-15 — was evidence in the criminal case, because he had threatened the life of the victim, and it should have been seized by detectives.

“The officers in this case had multiple opportunities to satisfy multiple obligations that would have prevented the victim’s foreseeable death,” the lawsuit alleges. “Defendant’s failures to follow well-established Washington law, common sense and SPD policies cost a young mother in desperate need of their services her life.

“To compound the injustices here, the criminal charges for the brutal rape and assault … by the DV batterer just before the victim’s preventable death were then dismissed by the King County prosecuting attorney’s office because the ‘victim is not able to participate in the prosecution,’” the lawsuit says.

The woman, in her 20s, was a mother of four and is identified only by initials in the lawsuit. One of her family’s attorneys, Tomás Gahan, asked that the initials and other identifying information not be published out of concern for her children, who don’t know how she died.

The lawsuit seeks compensation for her family and minor children.

An email seeking comment from the Seattle city attorney’s office was not immediately returned. The city routinely declines to comment on pending litigation.

The woman had called 911 on Feb. 4, 2023, to report the man had raped her and threatened to kill her “multiple times” that morning and that he had a rifle, resulting in a response by three SPD officers, identified as Harold Kang, Maryam Abasbarzy and Cara Reardon.

The lawsuit quotes extensively from audio recorded by the officers’ body cameras, showing her “clearly distraught” as she described the assault.

A photo taken from body-camera video and included as an exhibit in the lawsuit shows officers finding the rifle under the bed. The lawsuit alleges the officers left it there, without checking to see if it was loaded or otherwise secure.

Those officers remained on the scene for nearly two hours before arresting the suspect, who told them he had picked her up from the hospital just two days earlier after she had attempted suicide.

“Throughout their investigation, the victim begged the officers multiple times to take the assault rifle,” the lawsuit said. “She told them she was struggling with suicidal ideation, telling them that she had talked to her mother about killing herself.”

One of the officers, Abasbarzy, who was a trainee at the time, did say she was concerned about the “suicidal thing” and questioned whether they should leave the gun, according to a transcript included as part of the court claim.

The lawsuit alleges Kang questioned whether officers had the authority to take the gun, but instead of calling his supervisor he allegedly called his wife, SPD Detective Kailey Kang, who investigates domestic violence cases. The lawsuit alleges the detective “incorrectly” advised them to leave it.

The offers arrested the suspect, but left the woman alone in the apartment with the gun.

The following day, the woman’s brother called 911 to report that she was extremely intoxicated, unstable and threatening to shoot herself. This time, a single officer, Stephen Englund, was dispatched.

According to the lawsuit, Englund spoke at length with the brother and “understood the extraordinary seriousness of the victim’s mental health crisis and her need for intervention.”

Yet Englund did not approach the apartment or attempt to contact her in person, fearing for his own safety.

“I’m not going to put myself in a position where an intoxicated person is going to potentially make a really stupid decision and put me in a really bad spot,” according to a transcript of the recorded conversation.

Instead, he called an ambulance, and said he would request a supervisor and attempt to come up with a plan to lure the woman out of the apartment and away from the firearm. Englund spoke with the woman for six minutes on the telephone, then called off the ambulance.

“He never engaged any mental health professionals and never even approached the door of the apartment where the victim was in crisis,” the lawsuit alleges. “Officer Englund told the victim’s brother he was going to engage a crisis response team, but never did.

“Just as the officers had done on the previous night, he abandoned a plainly suicidal and intoxicated DV victim in severe distress in a small apartment with a load assault rifle.”

On Feb. 6, two days after police were initially called, the woman shot herself in the head with the rifle.

The lawsuit says the Police Department reviewed the incident and referred it to the civilian-run office of police accountability, which found the allegations of misconduct “inconclusive.”