Transcript of How an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death

I'm Ayesha Rascoe, and this is a Sunday Story from Up First. Our story today starts in the summer of 2020. Remember, that's when protests were happening all over the country after the killing of George Floyd. But in Seattle, something happened that didn't really happen anywhere else in the US. A standoff with protesters went on for days, and then the police actually abandoned a precinct in the middle of the city. In the Capitol Hill neighborhood. They just left. And once they were gone, protesters set up an Occupy-style camp around it. The camp was called CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. It was an experiment in a different kind of world with its own medical teams and its own armed security. People there believed they were building a better version of society, one that rejected police violence.

But 3 weeks in, that experiment ended.

There was a shooting at the camp, and the gunfire came from the people who were actually trying to defend the camp. A Black teenager died. 6 years later, the case remains unsolved. In a new 8-part series from NPR's Embedded, reporters Will James and Sydney Brownstone take us inside CHOP to find out what happened the night of the shooting and how violence came to occupy this anti-violence occupation. Today, we're bringing you the first episode in the series, and new episodes will be released weekly over the coming months in the Embedded Podcast. One more thing before we start. This episode includes explicit language and the sound of gun violence. Okay, here's Sydney and Will.

I remember the shooting happened on a Monday morning, a few blocks from where I used to live in a neighborhood called Capitol Hill. An editor called and asked if I could go down and report from the scene. So I get dressed and I run out of my apartment. Everything looks normal at first. People are walking their dogs, they're grabbing their fancy coffee drinks. I'm walking by rainbow crosswalks and a leather daddy bar. This is Seattle. But then I cross over onto 12th Avenue, and it's like stepping into a different universe. I end up walking into CHOP. CHOP was an Occupy-style protest that included a field of tents. There were crowds, art installations, and makeshift barricades. All of it took up about 8 square blocks of my neighborhood. It had been there for 3 weeks. But this morning, the morning of June 29, 2020, this isn't just a protest. It's a crime scene. Crowds of protesters are screaming in the middle of the street.

You know you fucked up!

You and your fucking partner!

One of them seems particularly frazzled and is carrying around a baseball bat.

In the name of Jesus, let you move!

There are members of the Black clergy there. Praying over a blood-smeared car.

"Enough is enough. Enough killing is enough.

We have to stop this. In the name of Jesus." Here's what I learned.

Two Black teens had been shot hours earlier. One of them was dead. His name was Antonio Mays Jr. My goal was to try to find witnesses who could tell me what had happened.

They started down by the park, and everybody started running, were ducking down, whatnot.

People staying at CHOP tell me that they saw a white Jeep driving around erratically. Antonio Mays Jr. was in that Jeep.

Car was driving around all crazy, like he was gonna hit someone.

Witnesses say they heard shots coming from the Jeep, and then people inside CHOP shot back.

There was, like, at least, like, 30 shots that went off.

Protesters thought that whoever was in that white Jeep was firing at them, that CHOP was under attack.

We are out here as peaceful protesters, but we do have to defend ourselves when there are threats against our lives. I mean, when you come in shooting, I don't think it's that much of a surprise when You get shot back.

I felt really unnerved by the certainty among the people I talked to that protesters had acted in self-defense. Things just seemed so chaotic on the ground that I didn't know how anyone could be certain of anything. And the story of what happened seemed to be hardening before my eyes.

I was covering the protests in 2020 as well. And like Sydney, I was waiting for answers about this shooting. Why would this Black teenager attack CHOP? Were protesters gonna step forward and reckon with what happened that night? And police, were they gonna arrest anyone? But instead, years passed, and this case faded from public consciousness. As reporters, we turned our attention to other stories.

The The protesters' version of events went pretty much unchallenged. But Will and I couldn't shake this feeling that there was more to what happened.

One of the complaints that was filed this week is by a father who lost his son.

Antonio Mays Jr. was 16 years old.

In 2023, Antonio's dad, Antonio Mays Sr., filed a lawsuit that told a different story. He said his son wasn't attacking CHOP.

The lies that those people up there told about my son angered me so much.

He said Antonio Jr. had actually come to Seattle to join the protest, to be part of the civil rights movement of his generation.

You know, he went to take a stand, and I, you know, I had to be proud of him for having the courage for that.

And he said whoever shot Antonio didn't act in self-defense, but killed him in cold blood.

I'm not a legal professional, but I think it's common knowledge that it's not legal to allow vigilantes to police their own zone.

Some of the questions we'd been asking ourselves from the beginning came rushing back. Who was Antonio Mase Jr.? And if he did come to Seattle to protest, how did he end up as someone protesters felt they needed to defend themselves against?

Was whoever shot Antonio really protecting the protest? And why do we still not know who they are or their motives all these years later?

We investigated these questions for more than a year. Interviewing close to 100 people and reviewing evidence that's never been public before. But the more we looked into this case, the more we ran into this circle of silence, from protesters themselves to the police and officials who were leading the city.

We started to see what happens when the people in charge and the people demanding change seem to decide that protecting themselves is more important than their responsibility to anyone else. I'm Will James, a reporter at KUOW, a public radio station in Seattle.

I'm Sydney Brownstone. I'm a reporter at The Seattle Times. From NPR's Embedded, this is We Keep Us Safe.

When we come back, Will and Sydney continue the story.

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By the time we started investigating this case, a narrative about Antonio had been out there for years. Protesters at CHOP said he was in the white Jeep attacking them, maybe even shooting when he was killed.

We knew Antonio was 16 years old and from Southern California and not much else because Antonio's dad wasn't talking to reporters back when the shooting happened. But after Antonio Sr. filed a lawsuit, we thought there was a chance he'd open up, that he could tell us more about Antonio. Hello, Mr. Mays.

Hello.

He talked to us from his home in Southern California while he was also taking care of his kids. Do you have questions for us before we start asking you questions?

You were there that— like, right after it happened?

Yes.

So you guys got to see the aftermath?

Yeah, I saw the car and I spoke to people on the ground. Antonio Sr. painted this picture of a father and son taking in and processing all of the protests breaking out across the country that summer.

The George Floyd thing happened, and he sees a current example of police brutality bigger than the Rodney King, I mean, this was a real-life Black movement against police brutality that was going down in his lifetime.

Antonio Sr. would record protests happening in LA where he worked and share those videos with his son.

My son asked me, he said, "Dad, if you didn't have us, would you be joining those riots?" And, you know, for fear of him being excited to go join, you know, this is the one time I felt like, damn, Did I give him too much information? You know, did I encourage him in a way that I don't want him to be encouraged right now? Because I didn't want him to go join that fight.

About a month after George Floyd's murder, Antonio Sr. learned his son had gone to join that fight.

Antonio Jr. left his home for Seattle on June 23rd, 2020, without telling his dad. Antonio Sr. filed a missing persons report as soon as he discovered his son had left.

I had no idea that he would travel that far.

He was shot and killed at the Seattle protest less than a week later. Antonio Sr. doesn't know what Antonio was doing during his days at CHOP. But he doesn't believe the protesters' narrative, because it just sounds nothing like the son he raised.

These books are stacked too, back to back.

One, two, three, four. As Antonio Sr. and I are speaking over Zoom, he walks over to a bookshelf.

These go all the way— these go all the way down.

And he starts pulling out these worn paperback thick, thick fantasy novels his son used to read.

R.A. Salvatore and Raymond Feist. He used to love The Legend of Drizzt.

I was like, "Oh my God, Antonio was a nerd." In a way that is super relatable, I should be clear. Like, I was also a fantasy nerd. Wow. So definitely dozens in there. He was reading dozens of these books.

He read all these, and some of them multiple times over. When we would go to work, he would have any one of these. In his pocket at any time, wherever we was at.

Antonio Sr. runs a barbecue business.

My family been barbecuing since before I was born.

And he was training his son to take over.

He'd be at home practicing slicing his onions, julienne style.

Antonio Jr. and his dad would go to farmers markets and sell their handcrafted barbecue sauce.

My son came to life at those markets.

Like, they would hang out, have fun talking to customers, have fun talking to the other vendors.

There was one night where my son made 120 pounds of asparagus, and he just had this cast iron skillet. He would put it all together, and he just made it over and over again, over and over again, and it flying out the window. I'm like, my God, look at him go.

Antonio Sr. told his son all about Black history.

I taught my son what it is to be Black in America.

He raised him with a deep understanding of the struggle for Black liberation.

Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Watts Riots, the Harlem Riots, the Black Panther Party.

He taught him about the dangers young Black men can face from police and what to do if they confront you.

I have been harassed by police on multiple occasions. So I teach my son to be careful so that when he's harassed by police, because I assume he'll be harassed by police, that he knows how to behave, knows how to speak, he knows how to move.

Antonio Sr. has mixed feelings about this now.

To be honest, if it meant that I'd have my son back, I wouldn't teach my son Black history because I want to have him back right now. I said, man, the hell with Black history.

I know this might be difficult to talk about, but how did you find out about your son's death and what were your communications like with the city after it happened?

The sheriff came to my house, knocked on my door, told me the bad news. I talked to the detective, the chief of police at that time. Called me once or twice. I said, "I need some arrests made. I need justice for my son." "We're working on that. We got some leads we're gonna follow up on.

You know, this could take a while, but we're working on it." And when's the last time you had any contact with the Seattle Police regarding your son's death? Do you remember what year?

Uh, 2020.

Their phones just went silent. I couldn't get a hold of the detective. Someone said that the case got reassigned, and someone else told me that the case was closed.

And he said eventually people just stopped picking up.

I still don't have any answers. Couldn't get a hold of anybody.

This takes us by surprise. Seattle Police have told us their investigation into Antonio's death is still open and active. We expected they'd been updating Antonio Sr. over the years, but he really doesn't know more than us.

It made us wonder, are Seattle Police still investigating or have they effectively given up on it?

I should know exactly what happened. I should have some answers. I should have some closure. Oh, this is what happened, Mr. Mays. I should be getting a report. This is what these people did. This is what happened to your son. This is who's responsible for it. This is the action that we took.

After our interview, we reached out to the Seattle Police Department. We wanted to know when they last communicated with Antonio Sr., but they declined to comment because of the, quote, open murder investigation.

Antonio Sr. sued the city of Seattle in 2023. He says the killing of his son was not self-defense, that it was a violent crime, and the city let it happen.

Clearly there's no consequence because that's why I'm here on an interview with you.

Our goal is to speak to as many people who were there witnessing what happened, and our hope is that some of them might be willing to tell us what actually happened.

This is open in your face, you know? How are there no answers?

And there's a reason Antonio Sr. is so baffled that this case is still unsolved. It's because so many of the minutes before and after Antonio's death were livestreamed, and many of these videos have been public for years.

The events leading up to CHOP and CHOP itself unfolded in about a month, but it felt like years' worth of history were compressed in that time. It started a few days after George Floyd was murdered, when thousands of protesters showed up in Seattle streets to confront police brutality.

Then police unleashed crowd control weapons. A standoff formed outside a police precinct, and that escalated for a week. Week until police decided to retreat. They abandoned the precinct.

Chop grew up in the roughly 8 square blocks around that vacant precinct.

Police were hands-off. They decided they'd only go into Chop for life-threatening emergencies.

And through it all, people chronicled almost every detail on livestreamed videos, with thousands of viewers following along in real time.

We're out here live in Seattle, and we're going to keep seeing what we run into.

There were so many livestreamers at CHOP that sometimes it felt like you couldn't walk 10 feet without seeing someone documenting it on a phone.

What's up, ladies and gentlemen?

Hey y'all, I'm back.

It's the resistance, y'all.

It's been a minute.

I'm out here.

You had livestreams from citizen journalists, from independent journalists.

Hey, you mind giving up a couple words on how you feel about this This autonomous zone going on out here.

You had YouTubers—

I'm gonna try my best to keep the camera away from people who don't want to be filmed.

—all broadcasting their version of CHOP.

Thanks for following me, bro.

Thank you very much for tuning in this evening. Stay tuned, guys.

It made us wonder: What could we learn from these livestreams about what really happened the night Antonio was killed? If you see any shells on the ground, pick those up, pocket them, take them home. That's coming up after the break.

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When we started investigating Antonio's death in 2025, we knew we had to revisit old live streams recorded that night. So we enlisted the help of our friend and colleague David Gutmann of the Seattle Times. Who'd been on this story from the beginning.

These videos have been online since the night of the shooting. There are 3 videos in particular that we've watched over and over again. They give us kind of a rough sketch of what happened that night. And the more we've watched them, the more we keep noticing new stuff, new details, new potential clues. Who's this car? So this video starts a little before 3:00 AM. Shot by this livestreamer who's standing in this big park that's right at the middle of CHOP. They're in the midst of all these tents, and this person is panicked.

More shots fired, more shots fired.

More shots fired, more shots fired. The person recording sees a car driving through the park on a turf field that's normally used for soccer, baseball, Frisbee. The livestreamer says they hear gunshots coming from the car.

Car's been circling around, shooting more Shooting more shots into tents.

We can see the car the livestreamer's talking about. It's a quick glimpse on the video. This white Jeep is what's got everyone all freaked out.

It's that white car that's been circling around.

We now know Antonio and another teen are inside this white Jeep.

I am ready to die for the cause, but it doesn't mean I want to be in the way of a fucking drive-by shooter. This livestreamer sends out a message basically saying that this white Jeep is attacking CHOP. But we can't see enough in the video to tell.

The next livestream starts minutes later. This one is shot from an apartment right above CHOP. You see people running in the streets below. You hear shouting. It sounds like a war zone. We can hear what happens next, the fatal shooting of Antonio. But we can't see it. There's a tree blocking our view. And then the boys inside the white Jeep crash into these cement barricades that the city put up around CHOP. You hear more gunshots, shots directed at the white Jeep. You hear the engine rev. It kind of backs up a little, like it's trying to get out of there. And then it crashes into the Barrickids again. It's a lot of gunshots this time. And, you know, it's dark out, but underneath the halo of a street lamp, you see a shadow outside the passenger door of the white Jeep. And then you hear this just kind of surreal line. "Oh, you're not dead, huh?" "Oh, you're not dead?" "No, you want to get pistol whipped?" "Want to get pistol whipped?" Yeah, that's what you hear.

All you can make out from the speaker who says this is their shadow, but they seem to be yelling at the boys in the Jeep. Boys who at this point have been shot multiple times.

Who yells this? And is this the person who shot Antonio?

Yo, shots. Shots are fired. Shots are fired, yo.

Shots are fired. So there's this third video. It's shot by a woman named Ashley Durellis. She runs up to the crashed Jeep just moments after we hear the last gunshots.

Move out the way!

Move out the way! It's chaos. Another shooter. That's another car. People are all over the place. There's people trying to treat the two boys who've been shot.

Jesus. Lord Jesus.

One of these boys is Antonio Mays Jr., and the other one is a 14-year-old named Robert West. Somebody shot.

They know, they know, they know. Somebody shot. They're taking him to the hospital. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

Protesters put these kids in two different cars to try and bring them to medical care. And once they leave, the scene of the shooting is pretty quiet.

That's not your blood, right? Of course it's not my blood.

We see the crashed white Jeep. Its windows are broken, and it is riddled with bullet holes. There is medical debris on the ground from when volunteer medics tried to treat the boys after pulling them out of the car. There's gauze and blood and broken glass. And there are about a dozen people milling around this scene in the dark.

Ashley Durellis films a guy walking around, and you never see this guy's face. You get a quick glimpse of him from the chest down. It kind of looks like he's wearing work boots, khaki cargo-type pants. An unzipped leather jacket. He's carrying a plastic bag. Right as he appears on camera, we hear this voice saying, "Unless you see any shells on the ground, pick those up, pocket them, take them home." Talking about hiding evidence, you know, stealing or destroying evidence.

"Hell yeah.

No evidence." Ashlee is, to put it generously, she's encouraging.

"Pick that shit up. Yup." "Pick up my shells. Because I want to get Get the fuck out of here. Well, thank you.

Yeah. Hey, I'm sorry.

I gotta take off, but I don't trust the cops. I don't trust, but you needed to be here. Yeah. Y'all don't know who I am. I know. I don't care to know. All I know is thank you. That's it.

Okay.

What is she thanking him for in her mind?

In her mind, I don't want to say it. In my mind, she is thanking him for shooting the two boys who I think in her mind were a threat to protesters there.

For security reasons, I'm gonna cut this live off. I'm not gonna let y'all see who talks to the cop and who doesn't talk to the cop.

Be safe, y'all. You watch Ashli Durellis's video and you're like, well, this will be solved real soon.

So here's what we see across these three livestreams. First, a protester announces that a white Jeep driving on the playfield is attacking CHOP. Minutes later, we hear one or more people shooting up that Jeep as it crashes into a barricade. And then we glimpse someone walking around in the aftermath saying he needs to pick up his shells.

So we've got some blanks to fill in here. And that means finding people who were there who will talk to us.

And, you know, if we're looking for who was at the scene, the only people I kind of know for sure were at the scene were the people who shot the videos. Did they see anything that we can't see on the videos? Did they talk to anyone? Do they know who's saying, "Do you want to get pistol-whipped?" Who is saying, "Hey, pick up my shells"? And so, Ashley Durellis was one of the first people we reached out to.

Can you put my name as Ashley "Quo Esthetics" Durellis?

She was literally at work. She works at, like, a— A restaurant, right? A cafe restaurant.

I definitely can't wait to invite you guys around when you come down here.

And not only is she at work, but she's, like, the only one at work as it's opening.

Hold on, give me one second.

So she's talking to us on, like, video Zoom as she's also, like, manning the drive-through.

I'm about to throw it in real quick. It's a chicken and waffles with tenders. Can you just do it? I'mma just on the phone real quick.

Who was Ashlee Durellis before she ended up documenting the aftermath of this shooting?

I guess I would call her a protester/filmmaker. She is filming from all these protests. San Jose, California. Oakland, LA, San Francisco.

I had gotten some notoriety because I had been going live streaming, like, every single day.

Came to Seattle because of the protests. She said she wanted to document it.

That was how I ended up immersing myself in the Seattle community.

We really want to ask Ashley if she has any more information about the man on her video saying, "Pick up my shells." Ashley, much like many of the livestreamers who are there most of the time, purposely is, like, pointing her camera down.

She's shooting people with a camera from, like, shoulders down. There is a Often a concerted effort not to film people's faces.

And what happened when you asked Ashley to describe who this guy was?

She said it was a big fat white guy.

He was a big white man.

Do you think he's one of the shooters?

He is.

He absolutely is the shooter. Do you know who he is? I mean, beyond just, like, a guy in a video? Interview with this motherfucker?

No! Say that again? Sorry. I didn't have an interview with him. I just literally— that's why I kept following him around. I needed the police to do their job. You find out who this motherfucker is.

Even though Ashley wasn't there for the shooting, she walked away believing the man she saw picking up shells fired at the white Jeep.

So Ashley shoots this video, parts of which certainly appear self-incriminating. About a week later, the video gets Ashley arrested. Her arrest is filmed, and it kind of goes viral online. What the fuck?

Why is she getting arrested?

She's just on a street corner, And all of a sudden, cops swarm her.

She ain't doing anything! Yes, her name is Ashley!

Ashley! You all are motherfucking pieces of shit.

Every single one of you.

She's taken off in a police van. Technically, it's for rendering criminal assistance, basically for helping cover up a possible crime. You got arrested a few days later, and you, as I understand it, were never charged with anything. What was that like?

They were trying to put me as like I was helping him clean up the crime scene when I was like, no, I'm recording him doing it because if anybody getting in trouble, it's gonna be him, not me.

She says, no, I wasn't encouraging him, right? I'm not helping him.

I don't agree with anything that he did. At the time, you might be thankful because those kids were shooting at you, but afterwards when you find out the truth, you're like, man, fuck that shit.

I don't want to be a part of this. Were the police like, "Hey, you know who did it?" Or what were they saying?

No, the police wanted me to give up the names of the people who were at the crime scene, like all the protesters. They didn't even give a damn about the shooter. They asked me one question about the shooter, but they were more interested about the protesters. Of course, there's stuff that's happening that happened there that I'm not going to divulge, but it's like, what's the number one rule of Fight Club?

Don't talk about Fight Club. Exactly. What's the second rule of Fight Club? I'm not gonna tell you.

They don't know.

What she's saying is, "We don't talk about that stuff." You know, people who were there, who witnessed this shooting, this killing, are not gonna talk about it. And that is something certainly we've run into over a year of reporting, is I feel quite confident there are people out there who know who did this shooting, but there are people who don't want to talk about it and won't talk about it. It was someone walking around CHOP with a gun, right? Obviously.

Everybody was walking around CHOP with a gun. So, you know, motherfucker, I'm top flight security too. What's up then? Like, come on now. Like, stop it. Cut the shit. Literally cut the shit. But what made him security besides the fact that he had a gun? That's why he was called security. And everybody at CHOP was security then.

We'd heard about CHOP security before. We'd seen people walking around the zone with body armor, sometimes with guns. But to understand who they were and what their role was the night Antonio was killed, we've got to go back to the beginning. How did CHOP start? Why did some protesters there decide to arm themselves?

And how did something so hopeful, a protest for Black lives, end up turning into this circle of silence surrounding the killing of a Black teenager?

No Black lives matter to the SPD. We didn't kick them out, they abandoned us. We did in this state. Move back to the intersection!

Move back to the intersection!

I always bristle at the fact that we gave up a precinct.

It's way more nuanced than that.

What were we so afraid of? That's on the next episode of We Keep Us Safe.

You can hear more of this story in NPR's Embedded podcast. Episode 2 is available now for NPR+ subscribers. This episode was reported and written by Will James and Sydney Brownstone. David Gutman is also a reporter on the series. It was edited by Luis Trelles and Laura Grineas with support from Katie Simon. It was produced by Adelina Lancianese with support from Dan Germa. Research and fact-checking by Danya Sulaiman and Miyoko Wolf. Robert Rodriguez mastered the episode. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo, Justine Yan, Benjamin Rapoport, Liana Simstrom, and Jenny Schmidt. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question. What happens if we refund tariffs? Why are groceries so expensive? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious, because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works.