Mother Tries to Sue San Francisco Police For Son’s Death

People just don’t seem to understand that when you shoot at the police, you’re gonna get shot too.

In San Francisco, a mother is pressing charges against the San Francisco police for the death of her son. But, the police didn’t actually kill him.  Her son was running from and shooting at the police, and ended up accidentally shooting himself, resulting in his death.

Kenneth Wade Harding, 19, fatally wounded himself while running away from officers who stopped him on Third Street in the Bayview neighborhood for failing to pay a Muni fare, police said. But in a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Harding’s mother Denika Chatman said police have some responsibility for her son’s death and that officers failed to give him immediate medical care. Instead, they “left him writhing in pain with blood gushing out of his neck,” the suit said.

“He was literally allowed to drown in his own blood,” said Chatman’s attorney John Burris. “He was killed needlessly.”

Harding was trying to fire at the officers with a pistol and apparently shot himself in the neck on July 16, 2011, police investigators said. Officers Matthew Lopez and Richard Hastings also fired on Harding, striking him in the leg, authorities said.

You know, even if the cops had actually shot and killed this guy, I would still side with the cops. We talk about this kind of thing all the time. If you try to shoot at the cops, you’re gonna get shot and, more than likely, killed. That’s how they’re trained to respond, and rightfully so.

But the fact that this woman is still trying to blame the cops for her son’s death, even though he died at his own hands, is just plain stupid. Hopefully, whichever judge gets this ridiculous case will throw it out, if it even gets that far.