The claim, mailed to the city clerk on Aug. 29 by attorney Caree Harper on behalf of Erica Webster and Drake Buchanan, also disputes the city’s account that Buchanan shot Pasadena Police Officer Bryan Vasquez during the incident, suggesting the wound may have come from another officer’s gun, and says investigators never bagged or tested Buchanan’s hands for gunshot residue.
Under California’s Government Claims Act, a claim of this kind must be presented before a city can be sued on state-law grounds. It is not a lawsuit but is often the precursor.
City of Pasadena Chief Communications Officer Lisa Derderian acknowledged early Thursday that “the City received the claim yesterday by mail” and said, “we are reviewing it before we can comment any further.”
The claim seeks damages “in the millions” and asserts wrongful death, battery, negligence and violations of the state’s Bane Act and federal civil-rights law, including excessive deadly force. Punitive damages are sought against individual employees, “but not against the City.”
Pasadena police responded that evening to reports of a shooting near the Metro station on Halstead Street, encountered Buchanan several blocks away and pursued him, the claim states; the events continued to the area of the 600 block of Sierra Madre Villa Avenue. The city has said publicly that Buchanan fired on officers and that officers returned fire, the claim acknowledges, without accepting that account.
The city’s own narrative, the parents say, has Buchanan falling to the ground before additional gunfire followed, and the edited critical-incident materials the city released contain the sound of multiple volleys.
On “information and belief” — the legal phrase for an allegation made without firsthand knowledge — the claim asserts that Buchanan had been hit, was down and had been disarmed, or had lost his weapon, before officers fired “additional fatal rounds.” It calls that final use of force “an execution rather than a lawful effort to stop an immediate threat.”
The proof, the claim says, sits with the city: the unedited body-camera and mobile recordings, the ballistic and trajectory evidence, the round counts and the officers’ statements. It demands that all of it be preserved and rejects the edited video “as a substitute for independent forensic review.”
The claim also asserts, again on information and belief, that Buchanan “did not fire the round that struck Vasquez” and that it “may have resulted from crossfire or friendly fire by one or more PPD officers.” The claim cites no ballistic evidence. It argues instead that the city has disclosed no independent examination linking the round to the weapon attributed to Buchanan, and that the attribution “must be tested — not presumed.”
Stated as fact, not belief, is the claim’s allegation about Buchanan’s hands: they “were not bagged or otherwise preserved for gunshot-residue analysis,” and no residue test was performed — a failure the claim says “destroyed or materially compromised highly probative evidence bearing on whether he fired a gun.”
The claim adds that if the officers involved were tested for alcohol or drugs afterward, “the City has not disclosed it.”
That last point opens the claim’s broader argument: that the shooting “did not occur in a vacuum.” It goes on to detail a number of incidents it claims reveal a police department which, uncorrected by Chief Gene Harris and city policymakers, made a wrongful shooting and a police-controlled, evidence-compromised investigation foreseeable.
The city has 45 days from the claim’s Aug. 29 mailing to accept, reject or settle it, according state law. The federal civil-rights claims are not subject to the state-claim requirement and can be filed in federal court at any time within 2 years of the shooting.
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