The family of a D.C. man killed in a 2018 crash involving a police vehicle is suing the District for his death, according to new federal court documents.
That May, 22-year-old Jeffrey Price died after colliding with a Metropolitan Police Department cruiser on his dirt bike. Police accounts of the incident allege that Price was speeding on the wrong side of the road when he slammed into the cruiser near Division Avenue NE and Fitch Place NE. (It’s illegal to operate a dirt bike on public rights of way in the District.)
Price’s family has disputed those claims since his death. They say police chased Price down the street—a practice that is against the department’s policy—and that a police cruiser intentionally cut him off, resulting in the fatal crash. Police have said they don’t have any evidence that the officers were engaged in an improper pursuit of Price.
Price’s uncle, Jay Brown, told FOX 5 shortly after his nephew’s death that the cruiser’s position in the road made it obvious that the driving officer sought to block Price with his car. “It was an intentional act,” Brown told the station. “It’s against police policy. And it’s a premeditated homicide, it’s murder.”
The lawsuit names as defendants the D.C. government, the mayor, the D.C. attorney general, and the three officers known to be involved in the incident: Michael Pearson, David Jarboe, and Anthony Gaton. Price collided with Pearson’s cruiser when the cruiser pulled into the intersection. MPD didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment and a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to comment.
The wrongful-death suit accuses the officers of negligence, assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, unreasonable seizure by excessive force, and violation of due process. The Price family seeks monetary damages for his estate, which is overseen by his mother, Denise Price.
According to the allegations in the suit, on May 4, 2018, Jarboe and Gaton “chased and or channeled” Price while he was riding his motorcycle “so that Price would be captured in the calculated trap set for him at the intersection of Fitch Place and Division Avenue NE.” The complaint also accuses the police department of generally “targeting black bikers with their MPD vehicles” and “hitting said bikers with their government vehicles or otherwise driving them off the road into dangerous obstacles and situations.”
This isn’t the first time the Price family has sued the city. They and the D.C. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last April after an officer allegedly searched Denise Price’s backyard without her permission just days after her son’s death. At the time, police said the search was unrelated to Price or his family and that the officer was looking for a gun that might have been dropped in the vicinity, though the officers did not tell the family this.
Natalie Delgadillo