The parents of a 21-year-old man shot and killed by police at a Gaithersburg McDonald’s last year have filed a wrongful death suit against four Montgomery County police officers.

Paul and Rhonda LeRoux filed the suit in a Maryland federal court last week after a Montgomery County grand jury cleared the officers earlier this month. In the complaint, the man’s parents say their son was experiencing a mental health crisis when police fired into his vehicle while he was parked in a drive-thru lane at McDonald’s on Flower Hill Way.

The suit names officers John Austin Cerny, Brooks Michael Inman, Romand Schmuck, and Sara Vaughan as defendants, as well as the county.

“Today Ryan Nicholson LeRoux should be alive,” the suit says. “He is dead because instead of helping a young African-American male in the midst of a mental health crisis, four Montgomery County Police Department officers shot 23 bullets at him.”

LeRoux pulled into the fast food restaurant on July 16, 2021, ordered food, then refused to pay, according to a 14-page report produced by the Montgomery County state’s attorney’s office. It notes that McDonald’s employees called police after LeRoux would not move his Honda CRV out of the drive-thru lane. When officer Brooks Inman turned up more than an hour later, the report continues, he observed LeRoux reclining in the driver’s seat, wearing headphones and staring into his cell phone. The police officer also spotted a gun on the front passenger seat, the report says.

“Officer Inman withdrew his service weapon, pointed it towards LeRoux and told him to ‘put your hands up,'” according to the report.

When LeRoux did not comply, Inman backed away, and more than a dozen other officers arrived on the scene per the report. Police-worn body camera footage described in the report shows that officer Sara Vaughan said she saw LeRoux raise the gun. Duty commander Captain Brian Dillman put in a call for a crisis negotiator. Shortly afterward — while the negotiator was still en route — LeRoux sat up in his seat, and appeared to point an object in the direction of police, authorities say. The four defendants named in the suit opened fire, the report continues; LeRoux was transported to Suburban Hospital and pronounced dead around 12:30 a.m. July 17.

Prosecutors say there’s no clear footage of LeRoux raising a gun, but the grand jury concluded that officers’ actions were justified.

LeRoux had legally purchased the weapon two months prior to his death. When police later searched his car, they found a prescription for Risperidone, an anti-psychotic medication. According to LeRoux’s parents, he had struggled with mental illness for most of his life, and he was living in his car around the time he was killed.

Police “knew that Ryan needed help—not bullets,” says the family’s lawsuit.

Spokespeople for Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich and Montgomery County Police declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

This story was updated to include a response from Montgomery County Police.