A St. Louis jury has awarded nearly $19 million to the family of a Black man who was shot and killed by police a decade ago.
Mansur Ball-Bey was fatally shot by two St. Louis police officers in 2015 as they served a search warrant in the Fountain Park neighborhood.
At the time, then-Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce declined to charge the officers, stating there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that they did not act in self-defense.
The investigation concluded that officers believed Mansur Ball-Bey was armed, but his family has disputed the claim since his death.
In 2020, the victim’s father, Dennis Ball-Bey, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the officers, the former police chief, and the city of St. Louis.
On Friday, a jury awarded Mansur Ball-Bey’s family $6.25 million in their wrongful death lawsuit, plus $12.5 million in punitive damages, totaling $18.75 million, according to attorney Javad Khazaeli.
Khazaeli said the family was pleased with the verdict, noting that the jury reached its decision in just 90 minutes. He added that the $18.75 million award was far greater than the city’s initial $450,000 settlement offer.
One of the officers signaled Friday that he plans to seek a new trial.
During the 2015 raid targeting guns and drugs, officers claimed Ball-Bey aimed a handgun with an extended ammunition magazine as he ran out the back door of a home on Walton Avenue.
Mortally wounded, Ball-Bey ran from the backyard of the home through a gangway to an adjacent front yard before collapsing, dead at 18.
His pistol—allegedly in his possession while running—was later found in the backyard near a dumpster in an alley. Officer Richard Booker Jr., an off-duty city police officer who witnessed the chase and heard the fatal shots, testified that Ball-Bey tossed the weapon there.
However, Ball-Bey collapsed in the front yard immediately after being shot in the back by Chandler, which proves he was unarmed at the time. DNA proves it was not fired at that time.
“He was running away,” attorney Jack Waldron said in his opening statement, pointing out the gun was found 164 feet from where Ball-Bey died. “He was unarmed and he was no threat to anybody.”
However, prosecutors concluded the evidence and witness accounts were not enough to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a statement, Joyce explained that there was “no independent, credible witness” that could be “put in front of a grand jury or regular jury who contradicts police statements,” she said in 2016, adding: “None of the other witnesses had a clear view at the moment when Ball-Bey was shot.”
The officers who opened fire are white and were identified as Ronald Vaughan, 29, and Kyle Chandler, 33, who fired the fatal shot. Both graduated from the police academy in 2008.
Ball-Bey was shot on the anniversary of the contentious police shooting of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis and a little more than a year after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, by a Ferguson officer.
