Officers who shot suspect testify as inquests resume

SEATTLE — Two police officers who fired at a 19-year-old suspect during a 2017 shootout in Downtown Seattle testified Wednesday before a King County inquest jury.

Damarius Butts was killed nearly five years ago, and the testimony comes as inquests into police shootings return to King County.

Canek Gordillo was one of four Seattle police officers who shot Butts during a tense incident that closed downtown streets early in the afternoon of April 20, 2017.

“I believed he was a danger to me and anyone who was near him,” Gordillo testified.

Officers were told Butts was an armed robbery suspect after a shoplifting incident at a 7-Eleven in Pioneer Square, where the clerk said Butts showed him a gun in his waistband when he confronted him.

When they tracked Butts down, police say he shot and wounded two officers, including Elizabeth Kennedy, who testified Wednesday she shot back following her training.

“I started firing directly at center mass with the intention of stopping the threat,” Kennedy said.

Inquest jurors will determine if officers followed department policy or crossed the line into what King County calls “criminal means.”

King County Executive Dow Constantine signed the new inquest system into law last year after the Washington Supreme Court agreed to reform a system Constantine said was biased in favor of the police.

“It seeks to establish what could be done, what could be changed, to prevent this tragedy from repeating itself,” Constantine said in 2021.

Police officers are required to testify in the new inquest system, and attorneys who represent them say that’s unfair because they could be potentially charged with a crime.

“It’s putting our law enforcement officers out there literally putting their lives on the line in a position that affords them less protection than a criminal suspect,” said attorney Ted Buck.

In 2021, Constantine said the rights of officers against self-incrimination remained unchanged.

Any decision about filing criminal charges is up to prosecutors.

King County is the only county in Washington with this type of inquest system.

Seven inquests have been ordered so far, and dozens more are pending.

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