Associated Press
LAKE GENEVA, Wis. (AP) - A woman claims in a federal lawsuit that police failed to use nonlethal means to subdue her knife-wielding 18-year-old son when they shot him to death.
Christopher Easley, 18, who had a history of mental problems, was shot by a town of Geneva police officer late on the evening of Oct. 26, 2000, after he confronted the officer and nine others with a knife in a Lake Geneva subdivision.
A four-day inquest held in Circuit Court in February 2001 cleared the officer who shot Easley of any wrongdoing.
The inquest jury found that the officer fired in self-defense as Easley charged at him with the knife. District Attorney Phillip A. Koss said he stood by the jury’s advisory finding.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee names the police officers, Walworth County, Lake Geneva and Linn and Geneva townships.
It alleges that the shooting violated the constitutional rights of Christopher Easley and that the use of force was “unreasonable and totally without justification.”
The shooting happened after Cynthia Easley called police, saying her son was suicidal and cutting himself with a knife. Before police arrived, he had fled into a nature preserve, and he was found hours later, about a mile from his home, where the standoff with police began.
Failing a settlement, the case is scheduled to go to trial next January or February.