The city of Arvada paid $2 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit over the 2021 police killing of a pregnant woman whom officers mistook for an armed shoplifting suspect.
Destinee Thompson’s surviving family members filed the lawsuit in 2023, two years after an Arvada police officer killed Thompson, a 27-year-old mother of three, and her unborn son as Thompson drove away from officers on Aug. 17, 2021.
The city settled the lawsuit in July, court records show. The Denver Post confirmed the settlement on Tuesday.
“This matter was settled some time ago, but due to complexities related to Ms. Thompson’s estate, this case was recently finalized in the courts,” Arvada police Detective David Snelling said in a statement Tuesday.
He noted that First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King found Thompson’s killing was legal and that she did not file criminal charges against the officer who fired.
The city did not admit liability in the settlement, Snelling said.
Thompson’s attorney, Siddhartha Rathod, said Tuesday that Thompson did nothing wrong before she was killed.
“Destinee Thompson was completely innocent,” he said. “She had no association with the shoplifting and she was murdered by law enforcement for no reason.”
On the day of the killing, Arvada police officers mistook Thompson for an armed shoplifting suspect, surrounded her car, broke a window with a baton and then opened fire when she drove away in a panic.
Officers were responding to a report that a woman had stolen a cartful of goods from the Target store on Kipling Street in Arvada.
An employee there told officers that he’d recognized a known shoplifter in the store and confronted the woman, but that she’d threatened him with a knife and left with the stolen merchandise. A witness followed the woman — who was not Thompson — to a nearby motel, and watched the woman knock on the door to Room 303.
Officers then searched the building and encountered Thompson, who was not involved in the incident at Target. One officer ordered Thompson to stop. She did so, and then told police that she wasn’t the person they were looking for.
She told officers the suspect was staying in Room 303 and was coming down the elevator. She clarified that she was staying in Room 417, refused to give ID to the officer, and then left the motel.
Thompson, who had two open warrants for her arrest in other matters, then ran across the parking lot toward her van, according to a district attorney’s letter clearing the officers of wrongdoing. But after she left, three officers decided to detain her, “just to rule her out,” even though she did not match the description of the armed shoplifter.
Two plainclothes officers in the motel parking lot drove an unmarked truck toward Thompson. One got out and tried to stop her before she got into her van; the other parked the truck behind the van. Thompson got inside her van and locked the doors.
One officer noticed she seemed frantic and kept repeating, “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me,” according to the district attorney’s letter. An autopsy later showed Destinee Thompson had both fentanyl and methamphetamine in her system at the time, according to the letter.
Five officers surrounded Thompson’s van and shouted at her to get out. One officer smashed the passenger side window with a baton. Thompson backed up the van, then pulled forward away from the officers, over the curb and into the street.
As she drove away, Arvada police Officer Anthony Benallo fired five shots, paused, fired two more, and then one final shot. Only the last shot struck Thompson, killing both her and her unborn son.
King found that officers were justified when they killed Thompson and declined to file criminal charges. The sole officer who fired told investigators he believed Thompson had run over a plain-clothed officer. She had not.
“We need to expect more from our law enforcement and this settlement reflects that the community must demand better policing from Arvada,” Rathod said Tuesday. “Destinee Thompson should be alive today.”
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