Family of unarmed Mich. teen fatally shot by officer sues

 The family of a Michigan teen who flashed a car’s brights at a sheriff sergeant’s SUV and wound up dead filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday.

A complaint on behalf of slain 17-year-old Deven Guilford accuses Eaton County Sheriff's Sgt. Jonathan Frost of unconstitutional violations of privacy and excessive force in a Feb. 28 traffic stop in the rural central Michigan county outside Lansing.
Guilford flashed the headlights of the car he was driving at the sheriff department’s new SUV as Frost drove it the opposite way on State Highway 43, according to the complaint. The Ford Explorer had “improperly bright or misaimed headlights” and Frost had stopped two other drivers for flashing their lights at him that night, the lawsuit said.
The officer and the unarmed teen can be seen arguing over whether Frost had his brights on in bodycam videothat was later released.
Guilford declines to turn over his license several times before Frost pulls him from the car, commands him to get on the ground and uses a stun gun on him in an attempt to arrest him in the footage. The five-minute video ends with Guilford screaming in agony after getting up and charging at the officer.
Eaton County Prosecuting Attorney Douglas R. Lloyd declined to charge Frost in June. Frost shot Guilford seven times after the teen knocked the officer down and pummeled him with punches to the face during the struggle in the snow by the side of the road, Lloyd concluded after an investigation. The prosecuting attorney’s office released pictures of Frost with his face bloodied by Guilford’s blows.
The probe by local officials and the Michigan State Police didn’t absolve Frost in the eyes of the teen’s family, though. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan names both the officer and the county as defendants and requests compensation for Guilford’s death.
Frost and the county committed a “huge miscarriage of justice,” Guilford’s parents said in a statement to the Lansing State Journal.
The acts of Frost in stopping, demanding identification, ordering Guilford from the car, arresting him as if he were a felon, tasing him and then killing him, were all separate and distinct illegal and unreasonable seizures under the Fourth Amendment,” according to the complaint.
The teen was driving his girlfriend’s Ford Focus home from playing basketball at his church that night and had left his license at her house in nearby Mulliken, his family said. The Guilfords and their lawyers argue he and the other drivers who flashed their lights never should have been pulled over in the first place.
“I don't understand how an innocent situation can escalate so much to end in the death of a harmless kid,” Guilford’s brother Aaron Guilford said in a statement to the State Journal. “Deven was listening to Frost's commands, he never swore or used any profane language. He was confused and he never received any respect in return.”
Prosecutors called Guilford’s death a “tragedy” even as they announced they wouldn’t charge Frost in June. Guilford, whose autopsy showed he had smoked marijuana hours earlier, can be seen calling his girlfriend on his phone in the video. Frost later said he grew worried the teen was part of a militia movement and calling in other members to the scene, according to Lloyd’s report.
The officer acted “in justifiable self-defense,” Lloyd found.

“While, in retrospect, both Deven and Sgt. Frost could have made different choices, ultimately this tragedy would not have occurred if Deven Guilford had not physically attacked Sgt. Frost,” said the 19-page report released this summer by local prosecutors.