The protesters are panicked.
It is shortly before 3 a.m. on June 29, 2020, and racial justice demonstrators at an encampment in Seattle are tracking a stolen white Jeep that's driving erratically.
A few dozen tents are spread around Cal Anderson Park, where protesters had set up a zone called the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or CHOP. Some people at the camp had been armed and on high alert for weeks, after a car drove into a crowd of protesters and several shootings in the area. As the Jeep slowly loops around a turf playfield, it comes within 10 feet of a tent and sparks a wave of fear that quickly sweeps the camp.
CHOP existed for 23 days in 2020, an eight-block collection of tents, graffiti and 24-hour protests that emerged after Seattle police abandoned a precinct in the heart of the city. Police left after 10 days of mass protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd. Nearly every night of the standoff had ended with police blanketing the neighborhood with tear gas. After they retreated, it felt like detente. Protesters held movie nights and set up mutual aid stations and stages for speeches and music.
But on this night, three weeks after the birth of CHOP, the air is filled not with songs, chants and demands for justice, but with paranoia, menace, gunshots. In the absence of police, an armed, voluntary security force emerged, set up by protesters themselves.
"There's shots, shots fired I think," a livestreamer says, capturing the moment in a dark, shaky video broadcast live to Facebook. Then the sound of gunshots. "More shots fired, more shots fired. It's that white car that's been circling around."
Livestreamer Diaz Love's video was one of the first to announce that shots had been fired at CHOP. (Credit: "Thoughts Uncensored" YouTube channel)
The implication is clear: people in the white Jeep are shooting at protesters in CHOP.
Less than 10 minutes later, armed people guarding the protest zone — in the absence of police — shoot all three occupants of the Jeep.
Antonio Mays Jr., age 16, was killed. Robert West, 14, was critically injured. Another teenager, whose presence in the Jeep has never been previously reported, was grazed by a bullet before he ran and disappeared into the night.
"When you come in shooting, I don't think it's that much of a surprise when you get shot back," said Colby Williams, a protester, on the morning after the shooting.
This narrative — that whoever was in the Jeep was attacking racial justice protesters and that protesters or their allies fired back in self-defense — was echoed in social media posts and throughout the encampment. It would linger for years.
The shootings and the aftermath were all caught on video — by surveillance cameras, citizen journalists, livestreamers. And yet, six years later, Antonio Jr.'s killing remains unsolved. There have been no arrests, no charges, no named suspects. Seattle police say the case remains active and ongoing but will not say more.
An 18-month investigation by The Seattle Times, KUOW and NPR's Embedded podcast and a review of more than a dozen videos from the night of the shooting reveal the most comprehensive view to date of how the chaotic scene unfolded. And they show how a Black teenager who came to join the civil rights movement of his generation — in a zone abandoned by police — ended up killed by members of a protest movement who thought he was a threat.
A Journey to Seattle
On June 23, 2020, less than a month after George Floyd was killed, Antonio Mays Jr. left his Southern California home and set out for Seattle, a city where he had never been and had no known connections.
He liked fantasy novels and hip-hop and worked in his family's barbecue business. He looked after his little sister. He left to join the racial justice protests that were sweeping the nation but in Seattle had taken on a unique form. Before he left, he wrote his father a note:
"I am not running from home. I am fighting for a cause," Antonio wrote to his father. "One day I want my sister to live in a world where her skin won't be the cause of any pain for her, physically or emotionaly [sic]."
How he got to Seattle remains a mystery. But he would resurface three days later at CHOP, standing shoulder to shoulder with protest leaders and addressing a city official and a crowd of onlookers.
"The police, their purpose is to serve and protect, right?" he says in a video clip recorded in 2020 by an independent journalist but discovered only late last year. "I wish that the police would have more supervision when it comes to their training to make sure that they're actually following their training. Because when they're on these streets, they disregard all of it."
Antonio Mays speaking publicly at CHOP. (Credit: Omari Salisbury/Converge Media)
Three days after Antonio Jr. gave that speech at CHOP, he was dead, shot seven times in the pre-dawn hours at one of the nation's most prominent protest zones.
He was killed in a stolen white Jeep. It's unclear whether he was involved in the theft of the Jeep.
Protesters and members of CHOP security were aware a car had been stolen just as the white Jeep appeared near the tents on the playfield.
Soon, panicked calls went out over the livestream.
Panic at the Barricade
It is 2:54 a.m.
A security camera captures the white Jeep leave the park and drive onto a small side street. It is headed straight toward another SUV, driven by a medic for CHOP security, who immediately throws it in reverse and backs away to avoid the white Jeep, which is coming at it head on.
Then a silver Nissan Pathfinder appears. Someone inside starts firing at the white Jeep.
Security camera footage from inside CHOP shows people in a Nissan Pathfinder firing gunshots at the white Jeep. (Credit: King County Superior Court)
A person wearing dark gray with a black bandanna over their face reaches out of the front passenger window and fires what looks like a rifle at the white Jeep.
The Jeep approaches the Pathfinder. As it drives by, a person wearing a bright white sweatshirt reaches out the window of the Pathfinder and over the roof and fires a handgun at the Jeep.
The Pathfinder, with shooters still firing, chases the Jeep down the street, toward downtown Seattle and into the night.
At least 15 shots are fired.
A forensic analyst, hired years later by the City of Seattle to examine videos from that night, did not identify any gunshots coming from the white Jeep. The only shots he identified were fired at the Jeep.
For just over three minutes, the white Jeep carrying Antonio Mays Jr. disappears from view. It's headed west toward downtown Seattle.
Back at CHOP, webcams record how the panic has spread back to the camp. A neighbor, from his fourth floor apartment, had stuck cameras to his windows that livestream the scene outside the abandoned police precinct.
"Everybody down, everybody down!" someone shouts.
"Eyes up, eyes up, eyes up!"
It is clear from the shouts that there are multiple people with guns at the barricades outside the precinct, and they are preparing to defend themselves.
"Anyone with weapons, I want them behind this barrier."
"If you are not armed, hide, get down."
"Security, eyes up. We're looking for a stolen Jeep, multiple shots fired."
"I need eyes on every single intersection."
"Everybody who is not armed, I need them on the ground, stay low."
A webcam recording from an apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood captured the panic that spread through CHOP on the night Antonio Mays Jr. was shot. (Credit: Marcus Kulik)
The teens in the white Jeep loop back toward CHOP. Around 2:59 a.m., they make a left and turn toward the precinct and the encampment.
Three shots ring out. The Jeep crashes into a barricade. Six more shots.
The Jeep tries to back up, tires squeal. Then it drives forward and crashes into the barricade.
Ten more shots.
Two 911 callers would later describe someone walking right up to the passenger side of the crashed Jeep and firing into it at close range.
A shadow appears, just outside the Jeep's passenger side. And then, a voice.
"Oh you're not dead? Yo, you want to get pistol whipped?"
(Credit: Marcus Kulik)
There is little, save the initial cries of panic, to support the narrative that's lingered for years — that Antonio and the two other boys were shot because they attacked the protest. A joint investigation from NPR's Embedded podcast, The Seattle Times and KUOW reached out to nearly 100 people connected with the protests in Seattle that summer, and this was the most common explanation. Years after the shooting, protesters maintain that Antonio Jr. and the other teenagers inside the white Jeep represented a threat that had to be eliminated.
No guns, bullets or shell casings were ever found on Antonio Jr. or Robert West or in the Jeep, and the city's forensic video analyst did not identify any gunshots being fired from the white Jeep.
The Aftermath of the Shooting
Any official investigation of Antonio Jr.'s killing is complicated by the handling of the scene and what happened after the final shots were fired.
Livestream videos from that night capture people warily approaching the shooting scene. First just a few, but soon more than a dozen. Within two minutes of the shooting, at least 30 people surround the Jeep. None of them are police.
Protesters and volunteer medics pull the two boys out of the car and try to treat their wounds.
Robert is loaded in a private car and driven to the hospital.
About 10 minutes after the final barrage of gunfire, Antonio is loaded into a silver Nissan Pathfinder — the same car that was shooting at him earlier — and driven toward an ambulance.
But the ambulance driver seems to view the Pathfinder as a threat and drives away.
The information the ambulance driver is getting over the radio is confusing and contradictory. One emergency dispatcher says that the silver Pathfinder is "the suspect."
Another emergency responder chimes in over the radio and tries to correct the dispatcher. No, they say, the Pathfinder has the victim in it.
Precious minutes go by before Antonio, grievously wounded, reaches a hospital.
Casing the Scene
Back at the shooting scene, the white Jeep is riddled with bullets. There are bullet holes in the front windshield. The rear windshield and side windows are shot out and shattered.
People mill around, peering into the Jeep, captured by a shaky camera that someone is streaming live to Instagram.
Livestreamer Ashley Dorelus recorded the aftermath of the shooting. (Credit: Ashley Dorelus)
"Don't touch it, don't touch shit," the livestreamer yells.
But another voice offers a caveat.
"Unless you see any shells on the ground, pick those up and pocket 'em, take 'em home," he says. "I need to pick up my shells, because I want to get the (expletive) out of here."
"Hell yeah," the first voice says. "No evidence."
Sirens wail in the distance, but there's no other sign of police.
People continue to mill around the Jeep, chatting casually, trying to understand what has happened.
"He's like 'I'm sorry, I ran out of bullets,'" a person says. Someone chuckles.
It's 3:23 a.m.
A young man in a hooded sweatshirt with bright white sleeves approaches a livestreamer.
Unprompted, he identifies himself to a journalist documenting the scene.
Journalist Omari Salisbury was on the scene just minutes after the shooting. (Credit: Omari Salisbury/Converge Media)
"Zay Huncho, Z-a-y-H-u-n-c-h-o-o," he says, as he shows the camera the blood stains on his sleeve. "Rest in peace, my brother."
"He got clapped and we brought him to the hospital, but whatever happened happened," he says.
"They spun around the field a few times and then they tried to come through our barriers, through our main entrance bro, and our people weren't having it. We already had their right tire out and they (expletive) drew down and took 'em out the car and we gave them the service."
People circle the white Jeep, like crime scene investigators, peering into the windows, taking pictures. None of them are police.
A couple blocks away there are at least nine police cars, parked, idling. Police bodycams show a group of officers, weapons drawn, round a corner and walk toward the site of the shooting.
"To see if we can get our eyes on this vehicle, see if there's still a crime scene," one officer says into his radio.
But they stop short, about a block away. One officer studies the crime scene through binoculars.
Footage from police bodycams recorded on the night of the shooting shows officers near the scene. (Credit: Seattle Police Department)
There are people surrounding the Jeep, he says. "It looks like they're digging through it."
The incident commander, over the radio, tells the police not to approach the Jeep. The officers turn around. As they retreat, someone walks from the site of the shooting, approaches the group of police and offers to help.
"We're just trying to see if you guys were trying to come in and help or what we gotta do next," the man says.
"Leave the car alone," an officer replies. "Quit digging around in it."
Source: Seattle Police Department
The officer says that when the sun comes up, homicide detectives will process the crime scene.
Around four hours later, at 7:45 a.m., police arrive at the crashed Jeep.
"Detectives searched the Jeep for evidence," the Seattle Police Department wrote in a news release the morning after the shooting, "but it was clear the crime scene had been disturbed."
More than six years later, no one has been charged in the killing or even named as a suspect.
There are more videos of the shooting, from an even closer vantage point, but they have not been made public. Police surveillance cameras on the walls of the abandoned precinct directly overlooked the scene of the shooting. Seattle police confirmed that footage from those cameras is part of their homicide case file but declined to release it.
In dozens of interviews over the 18-month investigation, people who were at or near the scene of the shooting have either said they know nothing about it or refused to say what they know.
"There's stuff that's happening, that happened there that I'm not going to divulge," said Ashley Dorelus, a livestreamer who recorded the aftermath of the shooting. "But it's like, what's the number one rule of Fight Club?"
Police say that to solve the case they need witnesses from CHOP — protesters, medics, security — to speak up.
"We need people to come forward," former Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said last year. "We need people who were there, inside of the area, to come forward."
Barnes was pressured into resigning last Thursday. His replacement is the fifth leader for the Seattle Police Department since CHOP.
This story is an accompaniment to a podcast series released by NPR's Embedded called "We Keep Us Safe." You can listen to all eight episodes here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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