Seattle agrees to pay $975,000 to settle lawsuit over 2019 police shooting

Mike Carter, The Seattle Times on Sep 22, 2025

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The city of Seattle has agreed to pay $975,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the mother of a 31-year-old man killed by police responding to a 911 call from a woman who reported her boyfriend had a knife and was threatening to kill her.

The settlement in the May 8, 2019, shooting death of Ryan Matthew Smith, 31, was reached six months after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to dismiss key elements of a lawsuit filed against Seattle police Officers Christopher Myers and Ryan Beecroft.

The appeals court sided with a 2023 ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly, who declined to grant qualified immunity to the officers who shot Smith after kicking in the door of his apartment in the Uptown neighborhood. Smith, who was depressed, intoxicated and suffering from a mental crisis, was holding a pocketknife.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that protects public employees from lawsuits alleging they violated someone’s civil rights unless it can be shown that the right was “clearly established” at the time.

The trial judge, Zilly, wrote in a Dec. 21, 2023, order that “when Smith was fatally shot, the law has been ‘clearly established’ that law enforcement personnel ‘may not kill suspects who do not pose an immediate threat to their safety or to the safety of others simply because (the suspects) are armed.'”

The judge went on to point out that “factual disputes exist” over whether officers could have used less-lethal means to subdue Smith: Three of the four officers, including Myers, were carrying Tasers, according to court documents.

The settlement was reached during mediation, and the lawsuit was formally dismissed Sept. 16. The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Smith's mother, Rose Johnson.

Brian Sullivan, Johnson's attorney, said his client had no comment.

This has been a very difficult experience for the family and they aren’t comfortable speaking with the media at this time, he said.

The officers were dispatched on the evening of May 8, 2019, after a 911 call made by Smith’s girlfriend, who said he was threatening to kill himself and her, that he had a knife and that she had barricaded herself in the bathroom. Four officers responded to the call, including Myers and Beecroft.

Evidence showed that Beecroft and another officer had responded to the apartment a month earlier on a domestic violence call. During that encounter, Beecroft spoke to Smith and, according to the other officer, had built an “awesome” rapport with him. No arrest was made at the time.

The night of May 8, however, the four officers gathered outside the door of the apartment. After announcing themselves, according to court filings, Beecroft kicked down the door and all four officers started yelling at Smith, who was standing in the hallway roughly 5 feet away and holding a knife down by his side.

“Over the span of approximately five seconds, the officers shouted overlapping commands,” ordering him to drop the knife, get on the ground and show his hands, wrote 9th Circuit Court Judge William Fletcher in an order issued in March by a unanimous three-member panel of appellate judges. Fletcher noted that Smith was “half-naked” and was 5-foot-7 and 143 pounds.

The shooting was captured on body-camera video.

Citing the video, the appeals court found there is evidence to support an argument that “Smith stopped after taking a few steps forward and began to comply with the command to put his hands up.”

“None of the officers deployed their Tasers. None of the officers warned Smith that they were about to use deadly force,” Fletcher wrote, noting “Myers began shooting a little less than six seconds after Beecroft kicked down the door.”

The court concluded a reasonable juror could find that Smith didn’t pose a threat to the officers or his girlfriend, who was barricaded in another room.

The officers, in statements made to investigators, said they believed based on the information they had received from dispatchers that the woman’s life was in danger.