$32M awarded in fatal shooting of teen by police

Jury absolves officer, faults Benton and ex-agency chief

A jury on Monday awarded the parents of a distraught and suicidal Benton teenager killed by police in 2016 $32 million in damages for the death of their son.

It took the jury of nine women and two men just over five hours to return verdicts absolving Kyle Ellison, the Benton police officer who killed 17-year-old Keagan Schweikle, of responsibility in the shooting, but the jury found that the city of Benton and then-Police Chief Kirk Lane had failed to properly train the department’s officers and to properly investigate the shooting.

The jury awarded damages to the parents — Piper Partridge, who currently lives in Colorado, and Dominic Schweikle of Durango, Colo. — in the amount of $30 million from the city of Benton and $2 million from Lane.

Following the jury’s verdict, Dominic Schweikle said although he was disappointed the jury did not find Ellison liable, he hoped the verdict and award would be sufficient to get the attention of other cities and police departments in the state and prompt changes in how police deal with people suffering from mental health issues.

“I don’t know what to think just yet,” said Schweikle, as he walked out of the courtroom. “Obviously, we wanted Ellison to have to answer for what he did, but if these municipalities aren’t forced to pay financially and just get slaps on the wrist, nothing ever changes.”

Schweikle said he hopes the verdict and damage award will compel other departments to evaluate training methods and to make changes in policies he said he hopes will help prevent

such tragedies.

“Our only goal through this whole thing is to change the culture of police departments and officer behavior so people don’t have to go through this stuff again,” he said. “I hope this will get the attention of some of these smaller police departments that have been getting away with this kind of stuff for decades.”

Talking about his son, Schweikle grew emotional, remarking that no amount of money would ever bring Keagan back.

“It’s the only thing we have and it’s the only thing that’s going to make these people who are responsible for these situations take notice,” he said. “It’s not going to bring Keagan back, but when this first started we thought, if anything, we want to do some good in some way to help people like us and young people like Keagan that are having problems.”

Jurors heard four full days of testimony last week regarding the Benton police response that ended in the death of Keagan Schweikle at the hands of Ellison, who is now a state trooper with Arkansas State Police.

Keagan Schweikle’s parents filed the lawsuit seeking unspecified damages and naming the city, Ellison and Lane as defendants nine months to the day following the Oct. 17, 2016, shooting in a wooded area near Partridge’s Benton home.

On Monday morning, the 11 jurors — one juror dropped out early last week — received jury instructions from U.S. District Judge Brian Miller and heard summations of both sides’ arguments, from Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, representing Schweikle’s parents, and Municipal League attorney Jenna Adams, representing Ellison, Lane and the city.

Geragos was assisted during the six-day trial by Little Rock attorney Richard Holiman, and Municipal League attorney Gabrielle Gibson assisted Adams.

Geragos summed up the case for the plaintiffs, saying the defense attorneys had spent “hundreds, if not thousands of hours” preparing their clients for trial.

“When I called Piper Partridge to the stand, I didn’t need so many hours where she couldn’t remember how many times she’d been prepped,” Geragos said of his first witness on Tuesday morning. He then said of his second witness, former Benton police officer Terry Fuller — who testified that as he was watching events unfold through binoculars he saw two fired rounds splash into the river behind Schweikle and then saw the teen fall next to the river’s edge — the two had met only that morning as Fuller took the witness stand.

“How can I call a guy wh0’s never been deposed by me as our second witness?” Geragos asked. “We’re not afraid of the truth.”

Fuller had testified that although he saw two rounds strike the river behind Schweikle and then saw the teen fall from the 4-foot embankment before hearing the three shots, it appeared to him that the teenager had just begun to move the gun he was holding to his own head when the shots were fired.

Geragos continued hammering on the theme he had based much of the plaintiffs’ case around in contending that the Benton Police Department lacked a plan to deal with someone suffering from a mental health crisis and that the presence of Ellison’s police dog, “Duco,” introduced an element of chaos into the overall operation that he said virtually guaranteed a negative outcome.

Earlier in the trial, witness testimony indicated that seconds before Ellison and two other officers — Det. Douglas Speer and Lt. Ronald Davidson — encountered the teen next to the Saline River, Duco had ducked underneath a section of barbedwire fence, which caused Ellison to somersault over the obstacle as the three officers stumbled through the heavily wooded area while searching for Schweikle.

“This guy was on the ground, fumbling around, going all over the place, gets up, he’s angry, he’s upset and he comes around the thicket and there’s the kid,” Geragos said, getting down on the courtroom floor and rolling around to demonstrate his point.

“He’s got two other officers there and what ends up happening?”

In her defense summation, Adams said she agreed that the case was tragic but said that didn’t automatically mean the police response was improper.

“Two things can be true,” Adams said. “It can be a tragedy and also be true that Officer Ellison was justified in his actions.”

Adams said as the events at the riverbank unfolded, the three police officers who were there had all testified that they saw Schweikle begin to point the gun at his head in their direction.

“Ellison started yelling ‘drop the gun, drop the gun, drop the gun,’” she said. “He wanted to get the gun out of the equation.”

She said Ellison had admitted on the witness stand that “he was terrified” during the encounter.

Adams conceded that it was possible Schweikle was attempting to comply with Ellison’s orders but that in the heat of the moment there was no way to know that.

“Unfortunately, Ellison is not a mind reader,” she said. “It was reasonable for Ellison to believe that when Keagan pointed the gun at him he intended to use it.”

Regarding Geragos’ criticism about the defense attorneys’ and Ellison’s trial preparation, Adams said such was to be expected in such a high-stakes lawsuit.

“This is a very big deal to him,” she said. “His preparing for trial is no different than football players preparing to go out and play … Just like the plaintiffs, Officer Ellison has been waiting nearly eight years for this to be resolved.”

Geragos, on rebuttal, ridiculed Adams’ sports analogy.

“It’s like a football game?” he asked.

“What are you talking about? This is a kid’s life. You’re telling me you need thousands of hours, hundreds of hours to describe what happened in the milliseconds when you came across a 17-year-old you knew was suicidal?”

Geragos also attacked Adams’ defense of Ellison in saying he had no way of knowing what was in Schweikle’s mind when he faced the officers.

“You don’t have to be a mind reader,” he said. “There wasn’t a piece of evidence to suggest this kid was going to hurt anyone but himself.”

Regarding compensatory and punitive damages in the case, Geragos didn’t lay out any specific amounts but suggested the jury award monetary damages sufficient to deter similar actions in the future by the Benton Police Department or any other law enforcement agency in the state.

“If you can’t tell this department they shouldn’t spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours to cover this up, to handle it, I don’t know what we’re doing here,” he said. “It is a tragedy, but it could have been prevented.”

Following the jury’s verdict, Geragos said he was humbled by the result. He said he believed the jurors found Ellison and the other officers who responded that day had acted in accordance with their training but found the training was inadequate to address the situation and that the investigation conducted by the Benton Police Department of its own officers’ conduct was substandard.

“I think the jury understood there was no plan, no training, no investigation, that they just unleashed on Keagan,” he said. “I didn’t ask for that amount. I let them do what they thought was right, and boy, did they.”

Regarding the jury’s finding that Ellison was not liable, he said that appeared to underscore a belief among the jurors that the liability lay with the city and the department administration.

“It tells you all you need to know about the message they were sending,” he said. “It’s ingenious. … This was an incredible rebuke to them.”

Regarding the practice of many larger police departments of investigating their own officers who are involved in shootings, Geragos said the message there was clear as well.

“I think the jury’s verdict says it all,” he said. “It’s not just business as usual.”