How an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death

0:00I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First. Our story today starts in the summer of 2020. Remember, that's when protests were happening all over the country after the killing of George Floyd. But in Seattle, something happened that didn't really happen anywhere else in the U.S. A standoff with protesters went on for days. And then the police actually abandoned a precinct in the middle of the city in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. They just left. And once they were gone, protesters set up an Occupy-style camp around it. The camp was called CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest.

0:45It was an experiment in a different kind of world with its own medical teams and its own armed security. People there believed they were building a better version of society, one that rejected police violence. But three weeks in, that experiment ended. There was a shooting at the camp and the gunfire came from the people who were actually trying to defend the camp. A black teenager died. Six years later, the case remains unsolved. In a new eight-part series from NPR's Embedded, reporters Will James and Sidney Brownstone take us inside CHOP to find out what happened the night of the shooting and how violence came to occupy this anti-violence occupation.

1:34Today we're bringing you the first episode in the series and new episodes will be released weekly over the coming months in the Embedded podcast. One more thing before we start. This episode includes explicit language and the sound of gun violence. Okay, here's Sydney and Will. I remember the shooting happened on a Monday morning, a few blocks from where I used to live in a neighborhood called Capitol Hill. An editor called and asked if I could go down and report from the scene. So I get dressed and I run out of my apartment. Everything looks normal at first. People are walking their dogs, they're grabbing their fancy coffee drinks.

2:23I'm walking by Rainbow Crosswalks and a Leather Daddy bar. This is Seattle. But then I cross over onto 12th Avenue and it's like stepping into a different universe. I end up walking into CHOP. CHOP was an Occupy-style protest that included a field of tents, there were crowds, art installations, and makeshift barricades. All of it took up about eight square blocks of my neighborhood. It had been there for three weeks. But this morning, the morning of June 29, 2020, this isn't just a protest, it's a crime scene. Oh, God, what are we doing? Crowds of protesters are screaming in the middle of the street.

3:15You know you fucked up. You and your fucking partner. One of them seems particularly frazzled and is carrying around a baseball bat.

3:23NPR Hosts:In the name of Jesus, let you move. There are members of the black clergy there praying over a blood-smeared car. Enough is enough. Enough killing is enough. We have to stop this.

3:42Here's what I learned. Two black teens had been shot hours earlier. One of them was dead. His name was Antonio Mays Jr.

3:58My goal was to try to find witnesses who could tell me what had happened. They started down by the park. and everybody started running and were ducking down and whatnot. People staying at CHOP tell me that they saw a white Jeep driving around erratically. Antonio Mays Jr. was in that Jeep. The car was driving around all crazy like he was going to hit someone. Witnesses say they heard shots coming from the Jeep, and then people inside CHOP shot back. There was at least 30 shots that went off. protesters thought that whoever was in that white jeep was firing at them, that CHOP was under attack. We are out here as peaceful protesters, but we do have to defend ourselves when there are threats against our lives.

4:46I mean, when you come in shooting, I don't think it's that much of a surprise when you get shot back. I felt really unnerved by the certainty among the people I talked to that protesters had acted in self-defense. Things just seemed so chaotic on the ground that I didn't know how anyone could be certain of anything. And the story of what happened seemed to be hardening before my eyes. I was covering the protests in 2020 as well. And like Sidney, I was waiting for answers about this shooting. Why would this Black teenager attack CHOP? Were protesters going to step forward and reckon with what happened that night?

5:35And police, were they going to arrest anyone? But instead, years passed. And this case faded from public consciousness. As reporters, we turned our attention to other stories. The protesters' version of events went pretty much unchallenged. But Will and I couldn't shake this feeling that there was more to what happened. One of the complaints that was filed this week is by a father who lost his son. Antonio Mays Jr. was 16 years old. In 2023, Antonio's dad, Antonio Mays Sr., filed a lawsuit that told a different story. He said his son wasn't attacking CHOP. The lies that those people up there told about my son angered me so much.

6:25He said Antonio Jr. had actually come to Seattle to join the protest, to be part of the civil rights movement of his generation. You know, he went to take a stand, and I, you know, I had to be proud of him for having the courage for that. And he said whoever shot Antonio didn't act in self-defense, but killed him in cold blood. I'm not a legal professional, but I think it's common knowledge that it's not legal to allow vigilantes to police their own zone.

7:01Some of the questions we'd been asking ourselves from the beginning came rushing back. Who was Antonio Mays Jr.? And if he did come to Seattle to protest, how did he end up as someone protesters felt they needed to defend themselves against? Was whoever shot Antonio really protecting the protest? And why do we still not know who they are or their motives all these years later?

7:32We investigated these questions for more than a year, interviewing close to 100 people and reviewing evidence that's never been public before. But the more we looked into this case, the more we ran into this circle of silence from protesters themselves to the police and officials who were leading the city. We started to see what happens when the people in charge and the people demanding change seem to decide that protecting themselves is more important than their responsibility to anyone else. I'm Will James, a reporter at KUOW, a public radio station in Seattle. I'm Sydney Brownstone. I'm a reporter at The Seattle Times.

8:20From NPR's Embedded, this is We Keep Us Safe.

8:27When we come back, Will and Sidney continue the story.

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9:59NPR Hosts:Investing in securities involves the risk of loss. By the time we started investigating this case, a narrative about Antonio had been out there for years. Protesters at CHOP said he was in the white jeep attacking them, maybe even shooting, when he was killed. We knew Antonio was 16 years old and from Southern California, and not much else, because Antonio's dad wasn't talking to reporters back when the shooting happened. But after Antonio Sr. filed a lawsuit, we thought there was a chance he'd open up that he could tell us more about Antonio. Hello, Mr. Mays. Hello. He talked to us from his home in Southern California while he was also taking care of his kids.

10:44Do you have questions for us before we start asking you questions? You were there like right after it happened? Yes. So you guys got to see the aftermath? math. Yeah, I saw the car and I spoke to people on the ground.

11:02Antonio Sr. painted this picture of a father and son taking in and processing all of the protests breaking out across the country that summer. The George Floyd thing happened. He sees a current example of police brutality, bigger than the Rodney King. I mean, this was a real life Black movement against police brutality that was going down in his lifetime. Antonio Sr. would record protests happening in L.A. where he worked and share those videos with his son. My son asked me, he said, Dad, if you didn't have us, would you be joining those riots? And, you know, for fear of him being excited to go join, you know, this is the one time I felt like, damn, did I give him too much information?

11:49You know, did I encourage him in a way that I don't want him to be encouraged right now? Because I didn't want him to go join that fight. About a month after George Floyd's murder, Antonio Sr. learned his son had gone to join that fight. Antonio Jr. left his home for Seattle on June 23, 2020, without telling his dad. Antonio Sr. filed a missing persons report as soon as he discovered his son had left. I had no idea that he would travel that far. He was shot and killed at the Seattle protest less than a week later.

12:33Antonio Sr. doesn't know what Antonio was doing during his days at CHOP. But he doesn't believe the protesters' narrative. Because it just sounds nothing like the son he raised. These books are stacked two, back to back. One, two, three, four. As Antonio Sr. and I are speaking over Zoom, he walks over to a bookshelf. These go all the way. These go all the way down. And he starts pulling out these worn, paperback, thick, thick fantasy novels his son used to read. R.A. Salvatore and Raymond Feist. He used to love The Legend of Drizzt. I was like, oh my God, Antonio was a nerd. In a way that is super relatable, I should be clear, I was also a fantasy nerd.

13:23Wow. So definitely dozens in there. He was reading dozens of these books. He read all these and some of them multiple times over. When we would go to work, he would have any one of these in his pocket at any time wherever we was at. Antonio Sr. runs a barbecue business. My family's been barbecuing since before I was born. And he was training his son to take over. He'd be at home practicing slicing his onions, Julianne style. Antonio Jr. and his dad would go to farmers markets and sell their handcrafted barbecue sauce. My son came to life at those markets. Like they would hang out, have fun talking to customers, have fun talking to the other vendors.

14:07There was one night when my son made 120 pounds of asparagus, and he just had this cast-iron skillet. He would put it all together, and he just made it over and over again, over and over again. And it's lying out the window. I'm like, my God, look at him go.

14:28Antonio Sr. told his son all about Black history. I taught my son what is to be Black in America. He raised him with a deep understanding of the struggle for Black liberation. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Watts riots, the Harlem riots, the Black Panther Party. He taught him about the dangers young Black men can face from police and what to do if they confront you. I have been harassed by police on multiple occasions. So I teach my son to be careful so that when he's harassed by police, because I assume he'll be harassed by police, that he knows how to behave, knows how to speak, he knows how to move.

15:08Antonio Sr. has mixed feelings about this now. To be honest, if it meant that I'd have my son back, I wouldn't teach my son Black history. Because I want to have him back right now. That's the man they have with Black history.

15:29I know this might be difficult to talk about, but how did you find out about your son's death and what were your communications like with the city after it happened? The sheriff came to my house, knocked on my door, told me the bad news. I talked to the detective, the chief of police at that time, called me once or twice. I said, I need some arrest made. I need justice for my son. We're working on that. We got some leads we're going to follow up on. You know, this could take a while, but we're working on it. And when's the last time you had any contact with the Seattle police regarding your son's death?

16:14Do you remember what year? 2020. Their phones just went silent. I couldn't get a hold of the detective. Someone said that the case got reassigned and someone else told me that the case was closed. And he said eventually people just stopped picking up. I still don't have any answers. Couldn't get a hold of anybody. This takes us by surprise. Seattle police have told us their investigation into Antonio's death is still open and active. We expected they'd been updating Antonio Sr. over the years. But he really doesn't know more than us. It made us wonder, are Seattle police still investigating? or have they effectively given up on it?

17:01I should know exactly what happened. I should have some answers. I should have some closure. Oh, this is what happened, Mr. Mays. I should be getting a report. This is what these people did. This is what happened to your son. This is who's responsible for it. This is the action that we took. After our interview, we reached out to the Seattle Police Department. We wanted to know when they last communicated with Antonio Sr., but they declined to comment because of the, quote, open murder investigation.

17:42Antonio Sr. sued the city of Seattle in 2023. He says the killing of his son was not self-defense, that it was a violent crime, and the city let it happen. Clearly there's no consequence because that's why I'm here on an interview with you. Our goal is to speak to as many people who were there witnessing what happened. And our hope is that some of them might be willing to tell us what actually happened. This is open in your face. You know, how are there no answers? And there's a reason Antonio Sr. is so baffled that this case is still unsolved. It's because so many of the minutes before and after Antonio's death were live-streamed.

18:28And many of these videos have been public for years. The events leading up to CHOP and CHOP itself unfolded in about a month, but it felt like years' worth of history were compressed in that time. It started a few days after George Floyd was murdered, when thousands of protesters showed up in Seattle streets to confront police brutality. Then police unleashed crowd control weapons. A standoff formed outside a police precinct. And that escalated for a week until police decided to retreat. They abandoned the precinct. CHOP grew up in the roughly eight square blocks around that vacant precinct. Police were hands off.

19:11They decided they'd only go into CHOP for life-threatening emergencies. And through it all, people chronicled almost every detail on live-streamed videos, with thousands of viewers following along in real time. We're out here live in Seattle, and we're going to keep seeing what we run into. There were so many live streamers at CHOP that sometimes it felt like you couldn't walk 10 feet without seeing someone documenting it on a phone. What's up, ladies and gentlemen? Hey, y 'all, I'm back. It's the resistance, y 'all. It's been a minute. I'm out here. You had live streams from citizen journalists, from independent journalists.

19:51Hey, you mind giving up a couple words on how you feel about this autonomous zone going on out here?

19:55NPR Hosts:You had YouTubers. I'm going to try my best to keep the camera away from people who don't want to be filmed. All broadcasting their version of CHOP. Thanks for following me, bro. Thank you very much for tuning in this evening. Stay tuned, guys.

20:14It made us wonder, what could we learn from these live streams about what really happened the night Antonio was killed?

20:22NPR Hosts:If you see any shells on the ground, pick those up, pocket them. That's coming up after the break.

20:36NPR Hosts:This message comes from Better Health. Summer can feel like a sprint. Kids home, trips to plan, routines flipped upside down. It's easy to slip into survival mode, just trying to get through it. Then suddenly, it's over. And you're wishing you enjoyed the days just a little bit more. Therapy can help you slow down and actually be present for the moments that matter. With BetterHelp, you can connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere, on your schedule. Don't just survive the summer. Thrive. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from Rippling. These days, you can chat with AI about almost any business problem, but Rippling AI is designed to actually solve them.

21:21NPR Hosts:That's because Rippling AI is built on your live global workforce data, so it doesn't just uncover insights into your business. It uses them to take complex actions across your departments. Ready for AI that isn't all talk? Head to rippling.ai slash first and get an AI that turns insight into action. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash first. Sign up today. When we started investigating Antonio's death in 2025, we knew we had to revisit old live streams recorded that night. So we enlisted the help of our friend and colleague David Gutman of the Seattle Times, who'd been on this story from the beginning.

22:04These videos have been online since the night of the shooting. There are three videos in particular that we've watched over and over again. They give us kind of a rough sketch of what happened that night. And the more we've watched them, the more we keep noticing new stuff, new details, new potential clues.

22:23NPR Hosts:Who's this guy? So this video starts a little before 3 a.m. It's shot by this live streamer who's standing in this big park that's right in the middle of Chop. They're in the midst of all these tents. and this person is panicked. More shots fired, more shots fired. More shots fired, more shots fired. The person recording sees a car driving through the park on a turf field that's normally used for soccer, baseball, frisbee. The live streamer says they hear gunshots coming from the car. Car's been circling around, shooting more shots into tents. We can see the car the live streamer's talking about.