‘We Keep Us Safe’ — NPR podcast series investigates deadly shooting that ended CHOP

The unsolved deadly shooting of a San Diego teenager during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest will be the subject of a new investigative podcast series from National Public Radio.

Meanwhile, the city is seeking to appeal a $30 million jury verdict in the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the Mays family.

NPR’s investigative podcast Embedded is partnering with KUOW and The Seattle Times to launch a new eight-episode series probing the killing of 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. It will debut June 14th.

The deadly shooting — one of two killings of Black teens in the 2020 protest camp on the streets of Capitol Hill — came early on a Monday morning amid a night of drive-by shooting fears around the protest zone. Mays was shot inside a stolen Jeep Cherokee that had been reported driving at high speeds through the streets around the CHOP camp. The teen died as camp security and medic volunteers worked to save him while Seattle Police and Seattle Fire refused to enter the protest area.

Armed security at the camp has been blamed for the shooting but no suspects in the June 29th, 2020 killing have been publicly identified. SPD says the investigation of the Mays Jr. slaying remains an open case.

Mays’s 14-year-old companion in the vehicle survived but suffered a brain injury.

The shooting was a final straw as Seattle Police were ordered to storm the protest encampments and clear the area two days later.

A memorial for Mays inside the CHOP camp in the days following his 2020 killing (Image: CHS)

In a case that centered on the Seattle Police Department’s abandonment of the East Precinct and the failures in the emergency response to the 12th Ave shooting scene, a King County jury in March arrived at compensatory damages totaling more than $30 million for the teen’s father and family in their wrongful death lawsuit against the city.

According to court records, Judge Sean O’Donnell denied a new trial in the case. City Attorney Erika Evans’s office has filed for a state appeal with hopes of overturning the massive verdict.

The new podcast will arrive amid the appeal effort.

Titled “We Keep Us Safe,” the coming NPR series is hosted by Sydney Brownstone of the Seattle Times and Will James of KUOW, the documentary podcast explores whether the teen’s death was an act of protest-zone self-defense or a killing in cold blood.

The series is part of a new wave of reporting and revelations about the protest camp as participants and observers have emerged in hopes of setting the record straight and filling in the blanks of history and politics that swirl around CHOP’s legacy including details of FBI “intervention” efforts involving activists that summer in Seattle.

NPR says the reporting team for its project spent over a year interviewing nearly 100 people, including witnesses who have never spoken to police. The series promises a look at evidence that has never been made public before, using the tragedy as a lens into a polarizing political moment.

“We Keep Us Safe” features additional reporting from the Seattle times and perspectives from Converge Media’s Omari Salisbury.

Salisbury emerged as the leading journalistic voice covering the 2020 protest zone while Brownstone was one of the few Seattle journalists joining CHS covering CHOP on the ground from the camp’s weeks of emergence through its final sweep and dismantling following the killing of Mays Jr.

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