The family of a man who was shot more than a dozen times by police has filed a lawsuit claiming that law enforcement fatally shot him as he was surrendering himself and complying with their orders.
Antwan Lindsey, 45, died on July 8, 2023, after he was shot 15 times by police officers in an apartment building in Columbus, Ohio.
Lindsey’s sister filed a federal complaint against the city and its police department, claiming excessive force, supervisory negligence, and systemic failures, according to local reports.
Authorities said the incident started when a man approached a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy working special duty at a Walgreens and reported that Lindsey had a gun at a nearby apartment building and was making threats. Police later learned after the shooting that Lindsey was upset because he thought someone had stolen his car when it had been towed.
The deputy called Columbus police to respond to the man’s report. Bodycam footage also shows him driving to the apartment building where Lindsey is visible. When he pulls up, gunshots ring out.
The deputy tells dispatch he’s taking fire and repeatedly shouts, “Let me see your hands!”
Minutes later, backup arrives, and more bodycam video shows multiple police officers searching the building until they finally locate Lindsey standing in a doorway between a hallway and a stairwell.
Police approached Lindsey from both the hallway on his right and the stairwell on his left, surrounding him, according to the lawsuit.
Officers on both sides ordered Lindsey to put his hands up and not move. The suit states that Lindsey had put his gun on the ground, had his arms raised “chin high,” and stood motionless at the door.
Bodycam video shows him standing still in the doorframe as officers from the stairwell and hallway yell out commands.
Suddenly, an officer from the stairwell can be heard yelling, “taser, taser, taser!”
The complaint states that when the cop tased Lindsey, the device made a “loud popping noise” as it struck him. When he started falling to the ground, the four officers in the hallway opened fire, shooting a total of 38 rounds at him.
An autopsy report revealed Lindsey was shot 15 times in the head, upper chest, arm, thigh, and back.
Nearly a year after the shooting, a Franklin County grand jury declined to indict the officers involved in the shooting. A release from the county prosecutor’s office stated that the officers thought they heard gunfire and shot Lindsey as a result.
Several of the officers who shot at Lindsey told investigators they thought the sound from the Taser was a gunshot.
“After reviewing the [bodycam] footage, it appears that the suspect had dropped or placed his weapon on the ground on the other side of the door. I could not see that from my position in the hallway. It also appears that what I believed was a gunshot immediately before discharging my weapon was the pop of the Taser being deployed,” one officer wrote in a statement, per The Columbus Dispatch. “On the footage, I can hear officers yell ‘Taser, Taser’ but during this incident I did not hear the Taser announcement.”
“Immediately before I fired my weapon, I heard a pop that I believed was a gunshot and I believed that the suspect had just fired at the officers in the south stairwell/stairway and that he was turning to fire at us,” another officer wrote in his statement. “I knew that prior to my arrival the suspect had fired at a Franklin County Sheriff Deputy. I do not believe I had any other reasonable alternative.”
The family’s lawsuit claims that Lindsey posed no threat to the officers who shot him and reportedly included a still image from one officer’s body camera that showed Lindsey’s hands raised and what appears to be a gun at his feet.
The “use of lethal force on Mr. Lindsey, who had surrendered and was incapacitated at the time of the deployment of a Taser when he did not pose a serious threat of harm to any person,” the family said in the lawsuit, according to WSYX.
The complaint seeks $75,000 in damages and a court order mandating reforms to Columbus police policies and training procedures.
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