AURORA | The family of a man fatally shot by Aurora police during his arrest one year ago in an apartment parking lot has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city in Arapahoe County district court.
Kilyn Lewis, 37, was being arrested by an Aurora SWAT unit May 23, 2024 in connection with a Denver shooting when he raised his hands above his head, holding his cell phone in one one hand.
Aurora police SWAT officer Michael Dieck fired one fatal shot at Lewis, who dropped to the ground. During later investigations, Dieck said he mistook the cell phone for a gun in the seconds the incident occurred.
The complaint asks for a jury trial and unspecified damages related to Lewis’ death.
Lawyers for the family said in the complaint that the phone was unmistakeable, and only Dieck — one of five officers with guns trained on Lewis during the arrest — fired prematurely and wrongly.
“His teammates, noticing all he had in his hand was a mobile phone, which he did not aim at any of the officers, saw no reasonable justification to fire a shot at Mr. Lewis,” attorney Brad. R. Irwin said in a statement Wednesday. “After Officer Dieck fired the lone, deadly shot that stole Mr. Lewis’ life from his wife, children, family, and friends, the other officers looked at him with perplexion.”
Aurora officials said the city had not yet been served with the complaint as of Wednesday afternoon and could not yet comment.
“As we have stated numerous times previously, every investigatory body – internally and externally – responsible for reviewing officer-involved shootings in Aurora determined that the officer acted lawfully in this case,” Aurora spokesperson Ryan Luby said in a statement. “Aurora City Attorney Pete Schulte agrees with those determinations and his office will strongly defend the actions of the officer and the Aurora Police Department.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLAINT
Lewis’ arrest was linked to a Denver shooting of a homeless man, prompting charges of attempted murder against Lewis. Dieck shot Lewis as he was raising his hands over his head as SWAT officers were yelling at him, with a mobile phone in his right hand. During an investigation, Dieck said he thought the phone was a firearm.
Within days, friends, family members and activists began protesting during, before and after Aurora city council meetings, sometimes shutting them down and spending hours speaking to or in front of the city council.
City lawmakers have increasingly restricted how the public addresses the city council without specifically targeting the Lewis coalition of about a dozen regular participants, including Auon’tai Anderson, a former Denver Public School board member. Anderson has been associated with a variety of controversial issues across the metro area for several years.
The two sides have competed in a game of cat-and-mouse contest for months, with city lawmakers trying to prevent the group from overtaking meetings, and the Lewis coalition making regular demands for attention and action.
Months after the shooting, the former Arapahoe County district attorney and a grand jury declined to seek criminal charges against Dieck, saying his actions were not outside the law. Weeks after that, Aurora’s new police Chief Todd Chamberlain said an internal investigation revealed Dieck broke no APD policies during the arrest and shooting, and that he would not pursue discipline in the case.
Since then, the Lewis coalition has made regular demands for a host of issues, but until today, family members had not filed a lawsuit against Dieck and the city for wrongful death.
The group is regularly critical of the Aurora Police Department, which was forced into a consent decree to enact a wide range of police reforms over five years. The decree was imposed almost two years before Lewis’ fatal shooting after the Colorado Attorney General found “patterns and practices” of APD using excessive force, especially against people of color. The most infamous of deaths APD is accused of wrongdoing involved that of Elijah McClain. McClain was arrested in 2019 while walking home from a convenience store unarmed, accosted by Aurora police and then overdosed with ketamine during his subduction.
The Lewis group regularly makes public demands for “justice” for Kilyn and other people of color they say are victims of Aurora Police.
MiDian Holmes, spokesperson for the group, said that justice for Lewis begins with city council being more visibly accountable for pursuing results from the consent decree reforms.
As for conversations from the dais or after meetings, members of city council have previously said that because Lewis’s family members have hired a lawyer and hinted at a lawsuit, city lawmakers are not allowed to call and talk to the family. City council members have regularly pointed out they have no authority to reopen the case or fire Dieck. Beyond that, they say they don’t know what else the group wants from them.
“If you’re tired of hearing about my son’s name, you will continue to hear Kilyn Lewis’ name until we get justice,” Lewis’ mother, LaRonda Jones said in April. “ No justice, no peace.”
Faced with the regular question of “what do they want?” the group’s spokesperson offered a list of demands to the Sentinel earlier this year.
Much of the demands focus on police reform and restructuring the police department, especially creating truly independent oversight boards or mechanisms. Much of their request is already spelled out in the consent decree with Aurora police. Other demands have long been under discussion with a variety of civil rights groups.
“They need to, as a council, ensure that they are leveraging their leadership and their platform to make sure that these oversight community members and these oversight boards are, in fact, feasible, instructive, and they have a binding responsibility back to the community,” Holmes said.
What the group was demanding
• Provide answers to open questions from the consent decree progress report, specifically regarding Kylan’s shooting, which was referenced as a tier-three issue.
• Sponsor an immediate review of all officers, identifying those with histories of excessive force to ensure transparency about officers with problematic records. They want these police personnel records and a report made public.
• Establish a permanent, independent civilian review board with full authority to monitor, investigate, and make binding recommendations for officer-involved shootings. Current review panels are considered performative and ineffective.
The NAACP is in the process of working to establish a civilian review board, and Mayor Mike Coffman told the Sentinel he is working closely with Omar Mongomery, NAACP president, to make that happen.
“If impossible leadership is not something that you are courageous enough to do, then step aside,” Holmes said during Monday’s meeting. “It really is truly about making sure that this doesn’t happen to someone else.”
I only wonder what took them so long. Now we’ll see what a jury has to say.
HA! A jury will send them packing… Glad the City Attorney is going to fight this. Tired of my city writing checks to people who don’t deserve it!
And there it is, the money grab we all knew was coming.
It’s always been about the money. Everything else was posturing–for the money.
Does this mean the Aurora City Council can start getting back to business at hand for the city of Aurora?