Family of man shot, killed by San Bernardino police files $100 million lawsuit

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — A $100 million lawsuit has been filed against the city of San Bernardino by the family of a man who was allegedly armed when he was shot and killed by police in July.

The announcement was made Friday in Los Angeles at a news conference organized by attorneys representing the family of 23-year-old Rob Adams, the man who was shot.

Attorneys said an autopsy showed Adams was shot in the back seven times by police as he was running away.

“Seven times they shot him in the back,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump said. “If that’s not an execution, I don’t know what is.”

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The incident happened on July 16 in a parking lot in the 400 block of W. Highland Avenue in San Bernardino. Police said they were conducting surveillance in an unmarked vehicle when they saw Adams with a gun.

As officers exited their vehicle, they said they gave Adams verbal commands, but he immediately ran toward two parked vehicles with the gun in his right hand.

“Officers briefly chased Adams,” Police Chief Darren Goodman said in a video statement released by the police department shortly after the incident. “But seeing that he had no outlet, they believed he intended to use the vehicles as cover to shoot at them.”

Adams was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

“I don’t want this for no other parent,” said Adams’ mother, Tamika Deavila-King. “This is hell on Earth. We want justice.”

Deavila-King disputes the fact that her son was armed with a gun, instead saying that it was a cellphone. She also said that she was on the phone with Adams at the time he was shot.

“We were on the phone. And he was in good spirits that day. He was celebrating about a car one of his cousins just bought, and he was laughing on the phone,” she said. “And then it just went blank, and somebody else clicked in on the line. And they told me that it was him being shot.”

After the incident, police said Adams’ gun, a black 9mm with one round in the chamber and 10 rounds in the magazine, was recovered at the scene.

“The men and women of the San Bernardino Police Department work tirelessly to protect our residents during a time when violent crime is on the rise,” Goodman said in the video statement released in July.

“It is unfortunate that our efforts to keep the community safe through proactive police work occasionally results in encounters with armed felons.”

A San Bernardino police spokesperson told Eyewitness News that they would not be commenting on the lawsuit.