Seattle Agrees to Pay $3.5 Million Settlement in Police Killing of Charleena Lyles

By Andrew Engelson
November 3, 2021

Members of Lyles's family spoke via video conference to reporters at a press conference organized by attorneys Ed Moore and Karen Koehler. ANDREW ENGELSON

Attorneys representing the family of Charleena Lyles announced today that the City of Seattle agreed to a $3.5 million settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against the Seattle Police Department and two white officers who shot and killed Lyles in her north Seattle home on June 18, 2017. She had called the cops to report a burglary.

The police shooting of Lyles, a 30-year-old Black mother of four who was pregnant at the time, inspired widespread outrage and sparked protests against excessive use of force by SPD, including calls for reforming and defunding the police during the city’s Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.

“I appreciate each and every person that was out there willing to put their bodies out there, to be pepper sprayed, to fight for something bigger than themselves,” said Lyles’s cousin, Katrina Johnson, one of several members of Lyle’s family present via Zoom during the press conference. “And being willing to say my cousin’s name. . . . We’re not done until the two officers who murdered my cousin are held criminally liable.”