How an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death

Our story today starts in the summer of 2020. Remember, that's when protests were happening all

“over the country after the killing of George Floyd. But in Seattle, something happened that didn't”

really happen anywhere else in the US. A standoff with protesters went on for days, and then the police actually abandoned a precinct in the middle of the city and the Capitol Hill neighborhood. They just left. And once they were gone, protesters set up an occupied style camp around it. The camp was called CHAP. The Capitol Hill occupied protest. It was an experiment in a different kind of world with its own medical teams and its own arm security. People there believe they were building

a better version of society, one that rejected police violence. But three weeks in, that experiment ended.

“There was a shooting at the camp, and the gunfire came from the people who were actually trying to”

defend the camp. A black teenager died. Six years later, the case remains unsolved. And a new eight-part series from MPR's embedded reporters will James and Sydney Brownstone take us inside CHAP to find out what happened the night of the shooting, and how violence came to occupy this anti-violence

occupation. Today, we're bringing you the first episode in the series, and new episodes will be

released weekly over the coming months in the embedded podcast. One more thing before we start. This episode includes explicit language and the sound of gun violence. Okay, here Sydney will.

“I remember the shooting happened on a Monday morning. A few blocks from where I used to live”

in a neighborhood called Capitol Hill. An editor called and asked if I could go down and report from the scene. So I get dressed and I run out of my apartment. Everything looks normal at first. People are walking their dogs. They're grabbing their fancy coffee drinks. I'm walking by rainbow crosswalks and a leather daddy bar. This is Seattle. But then I cross over onto 12th Avenue, and it's like stepping into a different universe. I end up walking into CHAP. CHAP was an

occupied style protest that included a field of tents. There were crowds, art installations, and makeshift barricades. All of it took up about eight square blocks of my neighborhood. It had been there for three weeks. But this morning, the morning of June 29th, 2020, this isn't just a protest. It's a crime sin. Crowds of protesters are screaming in the middle of the street. One of them seems particularly frazzled and is carrying around a baseball bat. There are members of the black clergy there

praying over a blood smeared car. Here's what I learned. Two black teens had been shot,

hours earlier. One of them was dead. His name was Antonio May's junior. My goal was to try to find witnesses who could tell me what had happened. They started down by the park and everybody started running and we're ducking down what not. People staying at CHAP tell me that they saw a white Jeep driving around erratically. Antonio May's junior was in that Jeep. What witnesses say they heard shots coming from the Jeep and then people inside CHAP

shot back. It was like 30 shots that went off. Protesters thought that whoever was in that white Jeep was firing at them. That CHAP was under attack. We are out here as peaceful protesters, but we do have to depend on ourselves when they're on threats against our lives. I mean, when you're coming shooting, I don't think it's not much of a surprise when you get shot back. I felt really unnerved by the certainty among the people I talked to that protesters

anyone could be certain of anything and the story of what happened seemed to be hardening before my eyes.

“I was covering the protests in 2020 as well and like Sydney, I was waiting for answers about this”

shooting. Why would this black teenager attack CHAP? Were protesters going to step forward and reckon with what happened that night? And police were they going to arrest anyone. But instead, years past. And this case faded from public consciousness. As reporters, we turned our attention to other stories. The protesters version of events went pretty much unchallenged. But will and I couldn't shake this feeling that there was more to what happened. One of the complaints

that was filed this week is by a father who lost a son. Antonio Mace, Jr. with 6223. Antonio's dad, Antonio Mace Sr. filed a lawsuit that told a different story. He said his son wasn't attacking CHAP. The lies that those people up there told about Mace angered me so much. He said Antonio Jr. had actually come to Seattle to join the protest to be part of the civil rights movement of his generation. He went to take a stand and I had to be proud of him for having to curse for that.

And he said whoever shot Antonio didn't act in self defense, but killed him in cold blood.

“I'm not a legal professional, but I think it's common knowledge that it's not legal”

to allow vigilantes to police their own zone. Some of the questions we'd been asking ourselves from the beginning came rushing back. Who was Antonio Mace Jr. And if he did come to Seattle to protest, how did he end up as someone protestors felt they needed to defend themselves against? Was whoever shot Antonio really protecting the protest? And why do we still not know who they

are or their motives all these years later? We investigated these questions for more than a year, interviewing close to a hundred people

and reviewing evidence that's never been public before. But the more we looked into this case,

the more we ran into the circle of silence from protesters themselves to the police and officials who were leading the city. We started to see what happens when the people in charge

“and the people demanding change seem to decide that protecting themselves is more important”

than their responsibility to anyone else. I'm Will James, a reporter at KOW, a public radio station in Seattle. I'm Sydney Brownstone. I'm a reporter at the Seattle Times. From NPR's embedded, this is We Keep Us Safe. When we come back, Will and Sydney continue the story. This is our glass. On this American life, when we like, it's a good mystery. Sometimes

about really big things. But most times, the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found

is currently filled with hands. I don't know, I've never seen this happen. This is true.

Mysteries of every size each week, this American life, wherever you get your podcasts. By the time we started investigating this case, a narrative about Antonio had been out there for years. Protesters at Chop said he was in the white sheep attacking them. Maybe even shooting when he was killed. We knew Antonio was 16 years old and from southern California and not much else because Antonio's dad wasn't talking to reporters back when the shooting happened.

But after Antonio's senior filed a lawsuit, we thought there was a chance he'd open up that he could tell us more about Antonio. Hello, Mr. Mays. Hello. He talked to us from his home in southern California while he was also taking care of his kids. Do you have questions for us before we start asking you questions? You were there right after it happened? Yes. So you guys got to see them after math? Yeah, I saw the car and I spoke to people on the ground.

Antonio's senior painted this picture of a father and son taking in and processing

He sees a current example of police brutality bigger than a Rodney King. I mean, this was a real life

“black movement against police brutality that was going down and in his lifetime.”

Antonio's senior would record protests happening in LA where he worked and shared those videos with his son. My son asked me said that if you didn't have us, would you be joining those riots? And, you know, for fear of him being excited to go join, you know, this is the one time I felt like damn did I did I giving too much information? You know, did I? Did I encourage him in a way that I don't want him to be encouraged right now? Because I didn't want him to go join that

black. About a month after George Floyd's murder, Antonio's senior learned his son had gone

to join that fight. Antonio Jr. left his home for Seattle on June 23rd, 2020,

“without telling his dad. Antonio's senior filed a missing person's report as soon as he discovered”

his son had left. I had no idea that he would travel that far. He was shot and killed at the Seattle protest less than a week later. Antonio Sr. doesn't know what Antonio was doing during his days at shop, but he doesn't believe the protestors narrative because it just sounds nothing like the son he raised. These books is back to back to back. One, two, three, four. As Antonio

Sr. and I are speaking over Zoom, he walks over to a bookshelf. He's gone all the way. He's gone all the way

down. And he starts pulling out these worn paperback thick, thick fantasy novels. His son used to read. All right, Salvador and Raymond Fise used to love the legend of trees. I was like, oh my god, Antonio was a nerd. You know, in a way that it's super related, well, I should be clearly like, I was also a fantasy nerd. Wow. So definitely dozens in there. He was reading dozens of these books. He read all these and some of multiple times over when we would go to work. He would have

any one of these and his pocket and any time wherever we was at. Antonio Sr. runs a barbecue business. And he was training his son to take over. And Antonio Jr. and his dad would go to farmer's markets and sell their hand crafted barbecue sauce. My son came to life at those markets. Like they would hang out, have fun talking to customers, have fun talking to the other vendors. There was one night for my son made a hundred and twenty pounds of a spare piece. And he just had

this cast iron skillet. He would put it all together. And he just made it over and over again, over and over again. And that flying out the window, I'm like, my god, look at him go. Antonio Sr. told his son all about black history. I taught my son what is to be black in America. He raised him with a deep understanding of the struggle for black liberation. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Was Rice, the Harlem Rice, the Black Panther Party. He taught him about the dangers

young black men can face from police. And what to do if they confront you? I've been harassed by police on multiple occasions. So I teach my son to be careful for that when he's harassed by police, because I assume he'll be harassed by police. And he knows how to behave. He knows how to speak. He knows how to move. Antonio Sr. has mixed feelings about this now. To be honest, if it meant that I had my son back, I wouldn't teach my son black history.

Because I'm going to have him back right now. That's the man that helped with black history. I know this might be difficult to talk about, but how did you find out about your son's death

“and what were your communications like with the city after it happened?”

The sheriff came to my house, knocked in my door, told me to bear news. I talked to the detective, the chief of police at that time, called me once the twice. I said, "I need some arrest made." And he's just as far as my son. We're working on that. We've got some leasing off follow-up on. You know, this could take a while, but we're working on it. And when's the last time you had any contact with the Seattle police regarding your son's death?

Their phones just went silent. I couldn't get a hold of the detective.

“Someone said that the case got reassigned and someone else told me that the case was closed.”

And he said eventually, people just stopped picking up. I still don't have any answers. I didn't get a hold of anybody. This takes us by surprise. Seattle police have told us spare investigation into Antony's death is still open and active. We expected they'd been updating Antony's senior over the years, but he really doesn't know more than us.

It made us wonder, are Seattle police still investigating or have they effectively given up on it? I should know exactly what happened. I should have some answers. I should have some closure.

Oh, this is what happened, Mr. Mays. I should be getting a report.

This is what these people did. This is what happened to your son. This is those responsible for it. This is the action that we took. After our interview, we reached out to the Seattle Police Department. We wanted to know when they last communicated with Antony's senior, but they declined to comment because of the quote, "open murder investigation."

Antony's senior sued the city of Seattle in 2023. He says the killing of his son was not self-defense, that it was a violent crime, and the city

“let it happen. Clearly, there's no consequence because that's why I'm here on an interview with you.”

Our goal is to speak to as many people who were there witnessing what happened and our hope

is that some of them might be willing to tell us what actually happened. This is open in your faith. How are there no answers? And there's a reason Antony's senior is so baffled that this case is still unsolved. It's because so many of the minutes before and after Antony's death were live-streamed. And many of these videos have been public for years.

The events leading up to chop and chop itself unfolded in about a month, but it felt like years were the history we're compressed in that time. It started a few days after George Floyd was murdered. When thousands of protesters showed up in Seattle streets to confront police brutality.

“Then police unleashed crowd control weapons, a standoff formed outside a police precinct,”

and that escalated for a week until police decided to retreat. They abandoned the precinct. Chop grew up in the roughly eight square blocks around that vacant precinct. Police were hands off. They decided they'd only go into chop for life-threatening emergencies. And through it all, people chronicled almost every detail on live-streamed videos, with thousands of viewers following along in real time.

Well here live in Seattle and we're going to keep seeing what we wanted to. There were so many live streamers at Chop that sometimes it felt like you couldn't walk 10 feet without seeing someone documenting it on a phone. Or something, he's in some of this. Hey y'all, I'm back. It's the resistance, uh. It's been a minute. I'm out here.

You had live streams from Citizen Journalists, from Independent Journalists. Hey, you might have given up a couple of words on how you feel about this. I'm trying to miss all going on out here. You had YouTubers. I'm going to try my best to keep the camera away from people who don't want to be filmed. All broadcasting their version of Chop.

It's a battle we'd like. Thank you very much for tuning in this evening. Stay tuned, guys. It made us wonder, what could we learn from these live streams about what really happened the night Antonio was killed? She's seeing his shells on the ground. That's coming up after the break. Every episode of It's Been a Minute, NPR's What's Happening in Culture Podcast starts by

asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow it's been a minute wherever you get your podcasts. We'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are filling your feed. When we started investigating Antonio's death in 2025, we knew we had to revisit old live streams recorded that night. So we enlisted the help of our

friend and colleague David Gutman of The Seattle Times, who'd been on this story from the beginning.

particular that we've watched over and over again. They give us kind of a rough sketch of

“what happened that night. And the more we've watched them, the more we keep noticing new stuff,”

new details, new potential clues. Who's this guy? So this video starts a little before 3am. It's shot by this live streamer who's standing in this big park that's right at the middle of the shop. They're in the midst of all these tents and this person is panicked. More shots fired, more shots fired, more shots fired. The person recording sees a car driving through the park on a turf field that's normally used for soccer, baseball, frisbee. The live streamer says they

hear gunshots coming from the car. Christman circling around, shooting more shots into tents. We can see the car the live streamer's talking about. It's a quick glimpse on the video. This white Jeep is what's got everyone all freaked out. It's that white car that's been circling around. We now know Antonio and another team are inside this white Jeep. I am ready to die for the cause that doesn't mean I want to be in the way of a fucking drive by shooter. This live streamer

sends out a message basically saying that this white Jeep is attacking chop. But we can't see

enough in the video to tell. The next live stream starts minutes later. This one is shot from an apartment right above chop. You see people running in the streets below. You hear shouting. It sounds like a war zone. We can hear what happens next. The fatal shooting of Antonio. But we can't see it. There's a tree blocking our view. And then the boys inside the white Jeep crash into these cement barricades that the city put up around chop. You hear more gunshots.

Shot's directed at the white Jeep. Here the engine rev. It kind of backs up a little like it's trying to get out of there. And then it crashes into the barricades again. It's a lot of gunshots this time. And you know it's dark out but underneath the halo of a street lamp you see a shadow outside the passenger door of the white Jeep. And then you hear this just kind of surreal line. Oh, you're not dead. Want to get pistol whipped?

“Yeah, and that's what you hear. All you can make out from the speaker who says this is their shadow.”

But they seem to be yelling at the boys in the Jeep. Boys who at this point have been shot multiple times. Who yells this? And is this the person who shot Antonio?

Yo, shot shots of fire shots of fire. So there's this third video. It's shot by a woman named

Ashley Darrellis. She runs up to the crash Jeep just moments after we hear the last gunshots. It's chaos. People are all over the place. There's people trying to treat the two boys who've been shot. One of these boys is Antonio Maze Jr. And the other one is a 14 year old named Robert West. Good shot. Somebody shot the signals at the hospital.

Protesters put these kids in two different cars to try and bring them to medical care.

“And once they leave the scene of the shooting is pretty quiet, that's not your blood, right?”

We see the crash twice Jeep. It's when those are broken and it is riddled with bullet holes. There is medical debris on the ground from when volunteer medics tried to treat the boys. After pulling them out of the car, there's gauze and blood and broken glass. And there are about a dozen people milling around the scene in the dark.

Ashley Darrellis films a guy walking around and you never see this guy's face.

You get a quick glimpse of him from the chest down. It kind of looks like he's wearing work boots, khaki, cargo type pants, an unzip leather jacket, he's carrying a plastic bag. Right as he appears on camera, we hear this voice saying, "What's your shiny shells on the ground? Pick those up, pop them up."

Ashley is to put it generously, she's encouraging. What is she thanking him for in her mind? In her mind, I don't want to say it. In my mind,

“she is thanking him for shooting the two boys who, I think in her mind, were a threat to protesters there.”

You watch Ashley Darrellis's video and you're like, "Well, this will be solved real soon."

So here's what we see across these three live streams. First, a protester

announces that a white Jeep driving on the play field is a tacking chop. Minutes later, we hear one or more people shooting up that Jeep as a crashes into a barricade. And then we glimpse someone walking around in the aftermath saying he needs to pick up his shells. So we've got some blanks to fill in here and that means finding people who were there who will talk to us. And, you know, if we're looking for who was at the scene, the only people

like kind of know for sure, we're at the scene where the people who shot the videos. Did they see anything that we can't see on the videos? Did they talk to anyone? Do they know who's saying, do you want to get pistol whipped? Who is saying, "Hey, pick up my shells." And so,

Ashley Darrellis was one of the first people we reached out to.

“Can you put my name as Ashley quote, aesthetics Darrellis?”

She was literally at work. She works at like a restaurant, right? Cafe restaurant. I definitely can't wait to invite you guys around and come down here. And not only does she at work, but she's like the only one at work as it's opening. Oh, not in 1/3. So she's talking to us on like video zoom as she's also like man in the drive-through. I'm off the road in real great. I'm taking a walk over the centers

and you do it. I'm just on a follow-up. Who was Ashley Darrellis before she ended up documenting the aftermath of this shooting? I guess I would call her a protestor/filmmaker. She is filming from all these protests. Carlos A. California Oakland LA San Francisco. I have got some notoriety because I've been going live streaming like every single day.

Came to Seattle because of the protest. She said she wanted to document it. That was how I ended up immersing myself in the Seattle community. We really want to ask Ashley if she has any more information about the man on her video saying pick up my shells. Ashley much like many of the live streamers who are there. Most of the time

purposely is like pointing her camera down. She's shooting people with a camera from like shoulders down. There is often a concerted effort not to film people's faces. And what happened when you asked Ashley to describe who this guy was? She said it was a big fat white guy. He was a big white man.

Do you think he is one of the shooters? He is. He absolutely is the shooter. Do you know who he is? I mean beyond just like a guy in a video. If you would do my bugger though. Say that again, sorry.

“I don't have an interview with him. I just weird. That's why I kept following him around.”

I needed this place to do their job. You find out who this puppy is. Even though Ashley wasn't there for the shooting, she walked away believing. The man she saw picking up shells fired at the white sheep. So Ashley shoots this video, parts of which certainly appear self-incriminating. About a week later, the video gets Ashley arrested.

Her arrest is filmed and it kind of goes viral online. She's just on a street corner and all of a sudden cops swarm her. She's taken off in a police van. Technically, it's for rendering criminal assistance. Basically for helping cover up a possible crime.

You got arrested a few days later and as I understand, it was never charged with anything.

What was that like? They were trying to put me as like I was helping him clean up the crime scene. When I was I know I'm recording him doing it because if anybody did it, she was going to be him,

I don't agree with anything that he did. At the time, you might be faithful because

“those kids were shooting at you. But afterwards, when you find out the truth, they're like,”

"Man, fuck that shit. I'm going to be more of this." Were the police like, "Hey, you know who did it or what were they saying?" Now, the police wanted me to give up the names of the people who are at the crime scene, like all of the protesters. They didn't even give it to them, I'm not sure. They asked me one question out of the shooter, but they were more interested about the protesters.

Of course, there's stuff that's happening that happened there that I'm not going to, you know, divulge, but if I was the number one rule of life club. Don't talk about fight club. Exactly.

What's the second rule of fight club?

I'm not going to tell you. He don't know. What she's saying is, we don't talk about that stuff. You know, people who are there, who witnessed the shooting, this killing, are not going to talk about it. And that is something certainly we've run into over a year of reporting is, I feel quite confident. There are people out there,

who know who did this shooting, but there are people who don't want to talk about it and won't talk about it. It was someone walking around Chop with a gun, right? Obviously. Everybody was walking from Chop with a gun, so you're not moving out of top life security. So what's up, Ben? Like, come on now, like, stop it, cut the shit. Literally cut the shit, but what made him security besides the guy that he had a gun.

“That's why he was caused security and everybody at Chop will secure you there.”

We've heard about Chop's security before. We'd seen people walking around the zone, with body armor, sometimes with guns. But to understand who they were and what their role was, the night Antonio was killed, we've got to go back to the beginning. How did Chop start? Why did some protesters there decide to arm themselves? And how did something so hopeful a protest for black lives end up turning into this circle of silence surrounding the killing

of a black teenager? Do black lives matter to the FPD? We didn't kick them out, we had bad in this thing. We got to hear such a thing.

Always bristle with the fact that we gave up a precinct. We're more nuanced than that.

What were we so afraid of? That's on the next episode of We Keep A Safe. You can hear more of this story in MPR's embedded podcast episode 2 is available now for MPR+ subscribers. This episode was reported and written by Will James and Sidney Brownstone. David Gutman is also a reporter on the series. It was edited by Luis Treyes and Laura Grinias with support from Katie Simon. It was produced by Adelina Lancianese with support from Dan Germa,

Research and Fact Checking by Daniel Suleiman and Mioco Wolf, Robert Rodriguez, Master of the Episode. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mombo, Justin Yann, Benjamin Rapaport, Lyanna Simstrom, and Jenny Schmidt. Irene Negucci is our executive producer,

“Amai Shirazko and up firsts back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your”

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