DC and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers involved in the 2020 death of Karon Hylton-Brown who was killed during a police chase are now facing a lawsuit filed by the mother of his one-year-old daughter.
On October 23 last year, a group of DC officers started a vehicular pursuit of Hylton-Brown, 20, at around 10 pm, after noticing he was driving a moped on a sidewalk in the Brightwood Park area of Northwest Washington.
The lengthy pursuit that spanned more than 10 blocks reportedly caused the death of the young man after he was hit by a civilian vehicle upon exiting an alley off the 700 block of Kennedy Street and entering Kennedy Street. He died at the hospital two days later due to a severe head trauma he sustained during the crash.
Amaala Jones Bey filed the lawsuit last week on behalf of her daughter with Hylton-Brown. Among the defendants are DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and DC Attorney General Karl Racine, along with five MPD officers. Up to $100 million is being sought in the lawsuit for damages.
The five DC officers involved in the incident were driving a police vehicle “in conscious disregard for an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury to Mr. Hylton-Brown,” according to the lawsuit. The same allegation was stated in a recent indictment of two DC officers in connection with the same incident.
In the September 24 indictment, Officer Terence Sutton, 37, who was driving the police car during the chase of Hylton-Brown, was indicted on second-degree murder — which carries a statutory maximum of 40 years in prison — and federal charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Lt. Andrew Zabavsky, 53, the officer driving the second police car, was indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
Sutton and Zabavsky are also among the defendants in the lawsuit filed by Bey. They pleaded not guilty last month.
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