The family and estate of a Nepalese man has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city of Westminster and the police officer who fired the shot that killed him.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver by Sanu Thakuri on behalf for her son, Birendra Thakuri, according to a news release from their attorney, Gail Johnson of Johnson & Klein.
On Aug. 25, 2018, Thakuri was shot by Officer Steven Bare, who fired one round, after Thakuri had attacked him three times, according to an Adams County investigation. That investigation cleared Bare of criminal wrongdoing.
The federal lawsuit, however, claims Bare “used excessive force in violation of the U.S. Constitution and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act,” according to Friday’s news release.
Thakuri, age 27 at the time of the shooting, had been diagnosed in March 2018 with “bipolar disorder, and in the ensuing months he was battling significant mental-health problems,” according to the lawsuit.
Bare, who responded to a 911 call about a fistfight between Thakuri and his brother near Federal Boulevard in Westminster, extremely mishandled his response, according to the lawsuit.
When Bare arrived at the scene, Thakuri was suffering a mental-health crisis, “acting strangely, screaming unintelligibly, slapping his own head, pacing, flailing his arms,” according to the 45-page lawsuit.
The document asserts, among other claims, that Bare should have waited for backup instead of approaching Thakuri on his own.
“Despite a range of other, non-lethal options for addressing a young man clearly having a mental-health crisis, Defendant Bare drew his gun and fired one shot, killing 27-year-old Birendra Thakuri on that roadside,” the lawsuit claims. “Birendra Thakuri’s death resulted from a pattern of deliberate indifference to the lives of civilians in Westminster and a failure to adequately train police officers how to respond to people experiencing mental-health crises.”
Bare, in addition, should have resorted to less-lethal options, such as pepper spray and use of a Taser, during the encounter, the lawsuit claims.
“Gun violence by police officers should be a last resort,” Johnson said in the news release. “There was no reason this unarmed young man had to die that day.”
The lawsuit includes a photograph of Bare, dressed in uniform in a short-sleeve shirt with his hands at his side. There’s a tattoo on his right arm, below his elbow, that appears to “spell out the phrase MOΛΩN ΛABE (mu omicron lambda omega nu lambda alpha beta epsilon) in letters of the Greek alphabet.”
“This phrase means ‘come and take them,’ referencing the person’s guns, and is commonly understood as a cultural symbol touted by extreme gun enthusiasts in a show of defiance in the face of a general perceived threat that one’s guns are in danger of attempts at confiscation,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is critical of Westminster and the police department because there is no video of the incident. “The fatal shooting was not captured on video because the Westminster Police Department does not require its officers to wear body cameras,” the news release said.
The lawsuit claims Thakuri’s estate and his heirs have “suffered actual physical, emotional and
economic injuries” resulting from Bare’s “unlawful use of deadly excessive force.” The lawsuit is seeking a monetary amount to be determined at trial.
Thakuri had immigrated to the United States, as a teenager, with his mother and brother, Surendra, according to the news release. A graduate of Centaurus High School, Thakuri had worked at First National Bank and attended the First Presbyterian Church in Boulder. “He was a beloved member of the community.”
A public candlelight vigil will be held at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, the one-year anniversary of Thakuri’s death, at the intersection of West 114th Avenue and Federal Boulevard.
