The father of a 19-year-old man shot and killed in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone in June filed $3 billion worth of claims against the city for creating an atmosphere of “lawlessness” that resulted in his son’s death.
“I just want to see justice for my son,” Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr. told the New York Post about the $3 billion in claims over his son’s death. “Somebody has to be held responsible. Something is not right, and my son should still be alive to this day.”
CHOP was occupied by Black Lives Matter protesters who received words of encouragement for their actions several times from city leadership, most notably Mayor Jenny Durkan.
Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr. was left “bleeding to death in the Seattle streets with no one to respond,” his father’s claims allege, adding that the confusion and blocked streets hindered the ability of emergency responders to tend to his son, forcing good Samaritans to take him to the hospital.
“With no assistance or rescue from Seattle first responders, Lorenzo died in agony from his wounds,” the documents say.
Anderson Sr. alleges “politically charged armed, anarchist protesters” were emboldened by city officials “to infiltrate, takeover, and govern a part of downtown Seattle” and “did not intervene and stop this state of lawlessness.”
In July, Anderson Sr. broke down talking about his son’s death on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program in a video that went viral, catapulting the case into the national spotlight.
“I can’t talk to him. I can’t just tell him I love him, you know? One thing about me, though, I raised all my kids — one household. All of my kids. I have the privilege to … raise all my kids. … The rest of my kids, they still stay with me,” he told Hannity. “I got a chance to raise them. God gave my son to me at 2 years old, and I’ve been raising him since 2 years old the best I can. … You know, kids, they do what they do. My thing is life was … all I can do is teach you how to live. I couldn’t teach them how to die because I ain’t never died before. So, I don’t know how to teach my kids how to die. … I know how to teach them how to live.”
“They should deployed them here to say, ‘Man, it’s time to go,’” Anderson told local news around the same time calling on the National Guard to be deployed to break up the occupied zone where his son was killed. “It’s time to move on. And break this up.”
The occupied zone was finally dispersed by law enforcement days later, following an executive order from the mayor.
