DENVER (CN) - A Colorado police officer shot a teenager to death through a closed bathroom door as the naked boy prepared to take a shower, his mother claims in court.
Elizabeth Alvar filed a federal complaint against the city of Fountain and its police officer Jonathan Kay for the death of her 17-year-old son, Patrick O'Grady.
Fountain, pop. 26,000, is south of Colorado Springs, in El Paso County.
Alvar called Fountain police on the afternoon of Sept. 22, 2014, to report someone trying to steal a motorcycle from her garage. Two other officers were dispatched, but upon hearing the address, Officer Kay said, "That's Patrick," and volunteered to take the call, the mother says in the March 4 federal complaint.
When Kay arrived, Alvar says, she told him her son was upstairs, preparing to take a shower. Kay followed her upstairs, looked into the bathroom when she opened the door, and saw her son naked, preparing to get into the shower, the mother says in the complaint.
She says Kay grabbed the bathroom door handle and told Patrick to put on his underwear. Patrick and Kay pushed and pulled on the door, and when Patrick managed to close it, "Officer Kay drew his weapon and fired one shot through the closed bathroom door. After firing the shot, Officer Kay opened the bathroom door to find Patrick lying naked on the ground with his head against the left corner by the bathtub. Blood was coming out of his head," according to the complaint.
Alvar says Kay was wearing a police-issued body cam, but it was turned off. After Kay shot her son in the head, she says, "at least four responding officers from the Fountain Police Department entered or observed the bathroom without seeing or finding a gun."
Fourth Judicial District Attorney Dan May cleared Kay of wrongdoing, after a joint investigation with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. Colorado's Fourth Judicial District includes El Paso and Teller counties.
The District Attorney's Office said it cleared Kay because Patrick had a gun.
"Upon reaching the bathroom door, Officer Kay could hear the shower running," the District Attorney Office's wrote in a summary of the investigation "Ms. Alvar opened the door and Officer Kay saw Patrick O'Grady standing in the bathroom. Officer Kay then saw Patrick O'Grady turn and grab a gun from the bathroom counter and point it at the officer. At that time, Officer Kay drew his gun and fired one shot in the direction of Patrick O'Grady, who was struck by the bullet."
But Alvar says in the lawsuit that the gun that officers claimed to have found at the scene belonged to another officer, and that they found it only after three other officers had searched the bathroom and found nothing.
"The gun Officer [Jose] Barraza took from the upstairs bathroom was later identified as being owned by Deputy Donald Beasley of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office," the complaint states.
Alvar's attorney Mike Thomson, with Purvis, Gray & Thomson in Boulder, told Courthouse News: "At this point, what we know is that at least two, maybe three officers looked in the bathroom before the officer found the gun. The owner is an officer for the El Paso County Sheriff's department. That's what we know.
"It seems unusual," the attorney added. "We haven't even been given a serial number to the gun."