Focus: Adults in the Room - We Keep Us Safe: The Chase

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

What really happened the night Antonio Mays Jr. was killed? Protesters claim he was attacking CHOP and they had to defend themselves. But new evidence from that night turns everything we thought we knew about the shooting upside down. We Keep Us Safe is part of Focus, a dedicated documentary channel from KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR network. Get in touch with the team by email at [e-mail]. Support KUOW and projects like this by donating at kuow.org/donate/focus.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Chris Morgan, host of the wild. Over the last 35 years, I've worked in the wildest places on Earth, tracking tigers in Siberia, filming orangutans in Borneo, following humpback whales, migrating jaguars, iridescent hummingbirds, and learning from the people devoted to protecting them. These stories changed how I see the world. I think they'll do the same for you.

The Wild with Chris Morgan, available wherever you get your podcasts. Focus. in Seattle. Heads up. This episode contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of violence. Previously on We Keep Us Safe. Do not walk around in the dark.

It is unsafe. In CHOP's final week, the utopia had faded. The mood around CHOP kind of changed. Antonio Mays Jr. arrived. I had like a bad feeling. I was like, yo, I think you should go home, bro. For Shaila Levitt, would end up crossing paths

with Antonio. We talked about different ways that he could channel him his own inner piece. He'd be shot dead just a few hours later. Protesters said he was in the white Jeep

attacking them. Was Antonio the type of person who could be a threat to chop? On the night Antonio Mays Jr. was killed. The journalist Omari Salisbury was in his temporary office, in a building right next to chop

when he heard gunshots. Yeah, so somebody's lighting up the fucking block right now. Hey, y'all. Once everything was quiet, he stepped out and started filming. Yeah, it's pretty funky out here, huh? And so Omari was on the scene just moments after bullets stopped flying. In the video he recorded, he inches toward the white jeep that's crashed at the barricades. And a loose crowd is still milling around in the aftermath.

People are talking about the shooting that just happened. Someone says, I'm sorry, I ran out of bullets. When Omari finally gets close to the Jeep, he can see that it's covered in bullet holes. Where's the driver at this? Oh, my God. The windows are shot out.

Blood is on the seats, and keys are still in the ignition. What? You're nauseous? I'm in the phone. The street is littered with glass and pools of blood. Antonio and the 14-year-old kid he was with Robert West are already gone. Protesters have taken them away to find medical help.

It's just horrible. I mean, this is just horrible, man. I don't seem a lot. And Omari, who's usually very talkative in his videos, kind of narrating what he's seeing in his stream of consciousness. You hear his voice kind of change. Let me just come over here and breathe for a second. Sorry, guys.

It's, man. As Omari is live streaming, a young man walks up to him. What did you see? I got blood on you, man. I see you got blood on your arms. And he says, I'm saving lives. Okay. What happened?

And he introduces himself as Zay-H-H-H-O. He spells it out. Z-A-H-H-O. Rest and peace, my brother, that came through. Rest in peace. Zay Huncho starts describing what happened that night. He got clapped and we bounced to the hospital. In one breath, bragging about how people at the scene tried to save the boys in the jeep.

But whatever happened, it happened, bro, but we had to save lives and do shit for the people. But also... Actor shooters came through in a slowing vehicle, they spun around the field a few times, and then they tried to come through our barriers through our main entrance, bro, and our people are having it. Talking about how our people shot. not the boys in the Jeep. Zay Huncho describes the boys as active shooters. We already had the right tire out,

and they fucking put on or drew down and took him off the car. And we gave him service. They got that, bro. At least want to save his life, man. There's something else about Zay Huncho that's really noticeable in this scene. His sweatshirt, the one that's spattered with blood, is bright white.

It's so bright. it's almost glow in the dark. We ended up following this white sweatshirt through the events of the night Antonio died. People who were there, people like Zay Huncho, say that the boys in the white sheep were attacking chop, shooting at protesters. They say people on the ground were forced to shoot back.

But then we found new evidence that helped us trace the path of this white sweatshirt all the way to the beginning of that night. And what we saw left us wondering why protesters were so convinced Antonio was a threat to their lives, a threat that had to be eliminated. From NPR's Embedded with KUOW and the Seattle Times, this is We Keep Us Safe. I'm Will James. I'm Sydney Brownstone. This is episode five. On sound politics, we'll walk you through your ballot this election season.

And keep you informed about the issues defining races across the state. like the Millionaire's Tax and how it's affecting the state Supreme Court races. I'm Scott Greenstone. And I'm Libby Dankman. Every week we break down the big storylines in this Washington and the other one. So you will be a better informed voter and everyone's favorite party guy. That's not a guarantee. Listen now on the KOWW app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rashila Levitt was one of the breakout organizers in the Seattle protests. She was known for her commanding voice and for her long flowing locks. Once Chop got started, she volunteered for a role on a team that tried to de-escalate conflict. And that's how she met Antonio. I sat and talked with Antonio for just a couple minutes. He had gotten into a disagreement with somebody else over something trivial. And I wish I could remember what it was. Rishila was the first person we knew of.

who actually talked to Antonio the night he was killed. So in trying to find out what happened that night, Rishaila was one of the first people we called. Hi, Rishaila. Thanks so much for being here, Rishaila. We are on Zoom in Seattle. Rishail is in Texas, where she lives now. Yeah, I'm at my apartment.

I'm actually cleaning, so it's perfect. I'm kind of looking for her clean up. While Rishala tells the story of that night, she sweeps, she vapes, she paces around the room, tries to corral her dog. And as she's doing all this, she tells us about realizing

that the teenager she talked to was the same one who wound up dead a few hours later. Like I just, it didn't, it didn't make sense. Just to check, if I show you a picture, can you tell me if that was the same kid you spoke

two on the field. Yeah. We show her a photo that is one of Antonio Sr.'s favorites. It shows his son at one of the farmer's markets where the two work together selling barbecue. And in the photo, Antonio is sitting in a camping chair with a strawberry shake in one hand and a big piece of barbecue ox tail in the other. He's got a big grin on his face.

Is this him? It looks like a younger photo of him. Yeah, this would have been taken about seven months prior. Rishaila pauses, and then her face crumbles as she asks us to pull up the photo again. Oh, my gosh. I didn't see that. That picture just rattled me up. I knew it was young.

That first photo, it's so young, like, so baby. I've got all younger brouple. And I have seven nephews. And I cannot, I can't imagine them being in that situation. I wonder, do you want to just go through how you experienced that night? Leading up to the shooting, there was a car that were two cars, one car, two cars, that were driving to chop and driving on the field. and like trying the protesters. And...

Roshayla says she stepped outside her tent in the park and saw all of this happening in front of her. Since she was part of Chops de-escalation team, she had her radio and she got into a vehicle with some other protesters to chase down whoever was driving around. But I remember being in the car with three other people and I was in the car simply because I had a radio as part of the escalation team

and was in contact with the rest of them. That means she was in touch with CHOP security. But Rishaila says she and the others in the vehicle quickly lose track of the car they were following. The car drove off, and we hear gunshots, or what sounds like gunshots, and we're like, is that gunshot or is it fireworks? We hear it again, we're like, that's definitely gunshot.

and then the comm started kind of going crazy. And I remember looking at everybody else in the car, like, what the fuck was that? Rishaila had no idea that she'd just heard the shots that killed Antonio and critically wounded Robert West. And then all this chatter erupted over her radio. Everybody in the car is, like, freaking out because of what we heard. And then it just went, like, scary silent. like this eerie haunting silence, it felt like it lasted forever. And I know that it was just seconds.

Like I know that it wasn't that long, but it felt like it lasted with eternity. And then everybody was going crazy on the comp, asking a million questions, trying to figure out where the shots came from, Who shot that weapon? Just, like, calling out for medics, calling out for transportation vehicles. Rishaila says the vehicle she was in

pulled up to the shooting scene. She saw the crashed white Jeep. She saw volunteer medics rushing to bandage the boy's wounds. Antonio and Robert had been shot multiple times, and they had lost a lot of blood. Video from the scene shows volunteer medics trying to help them. I mean, it was so hectic and so crazy.

And we got there, and they were in the process of pulling the boys out of the car and putting them on the ground to start trying to save them. And there was glass and blood and so much movement surrounding them. and they were just like, it was so still. I'm going to call 911. Rashila is one of many protesters who call 911. We hear Rashila begging for help for paramedics to come and try to save these kids. Ambulances won't come in until police have secured the scene.

But police aren't. showing on. Antonio seems to be in much worse shape than Robert. Protesters decide they can't wait anymore. They're going to have to try to save these kids themselves. Robert is loaded into a private vehicle and rush to the hospital. Rishaila helps load Antonio into the car she's been riding in. It's a silver pass finder.

I was in the car finder, no place. There's someone on the roof. I was in the car that we were using to try a transport from the protest area to either an ambulance or the hospital. So I was there for the whole thing. They're rushing to find help to meet an ambulance. And they find one idling just a block or so away. Rishaila says they pull up along. side it with the window down.

But instead of helping, the ambulance driver pulls away without a word. What could be the reason that they're not stopping? We couldn't fathom. Why they wouldn't stop? Why they wouldn't help us? It didn't make sense. Rishaila and her crew immediately chase after it. While Antonio is in the backseat, help for him is right there.

if they can just get this ambulance to stop. I just remember, like, we just, just begging. Like, we just wanted them to stop. We just wanted help. All the people in the Pathfinder can think to do is record what they're seeing. So Rashila picks up her phone. Why do they not want to help us?

Take him to Sweden. In this video, shot from inside the Pathfinder, you see the ambulance, just ahead in the Pathfinder's headlights weaving through the darkened streets of Seattle. And the ambulance's lights cast everything in this red glow. Please guys open! Just go, they're not helping.

People in the Pathfinder are screaming at the fleeing ambulance, begging for help. We're only going to play select pieces of the audio because a lot of this is really disturbing. You can hear Antonio throughout, and he's clearly on the verge of dying. His breathing is labored. Some people who were in the car that night

have described it to us as a death rattle. After several agonizing minutes, Rishaila and the others finally see a bunch of emergency vehicles congregated in a church parking lot. They pull in, and emergency responders take over. Pull them out right here, put him on the ground. He has gunshot wounds.

Someone at the scene starts listing Antonio's injuries. Gunshot wound to the side of the head. Exit wound to the top of the head. A gunshot to the side of the mouth. At least four to his arm and one to his side. As emergency responders work on Antonio, Rashila and the others hop back in the Pathfinder to see if anyone else needs help. We got to go back.

We got to go back. Do they have his information? No, nobody knows this information. We fuck it. We need to go. I don't know. We need to go. Fuck it.

Fuck it. We need to go. A voice shouts. We love you from the car's window like a final message to Antonio. And they head back the chop. We love you. This is shot a dispatch. Anymore victims?

Antonio was declared dead at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center at 3.37 a.m. About 40 minutes after he was shot. To Roshalah, the city is responsible for Antonio's death. The city didn't do their job. People that are forced to aid those in need. You know, the fact that we had to chase down this ambulance is wild to me. Had they stopped when they first saw us, he could, he might still be alive, you know. And it just is, it makes me, it bothers me a lot.

So why did the ambulance drive away? We made a public records request, and we got back tape of dispatchers and emergency responders talking to each other. Suddenly, we had access to a different perspective. The vehicle is a unit or not? Okay, because we're saying that the silver Nissan was the suspect. But you guys... A dispatcher is saying the Pathfinder that Rishal is in is the suspect? The fire department responds.

Okay, so no, no, the Silver Nissan Pathfinder has one of the gunshot victims in it. We told them to go to that intersection to get them out of the chair. What would make a dispatcher think the Pathfinder was the suspect? We were about to find out. See this right here? Holy shit. That's after a break. Hi, I'm Monica Nicholsberg.

And I'm Joshua McNichols. We host KUOW's Economy Podcast, booming. New research suggests bringing devices into the classroom may actually negatively impact learning. And parents and teachers are pushing back. On the latest episode, Microsoft President Brad Smith thinks AI can be a safe and effective tool in the classroom, but the teachers should decide when and how to use it. Listen to booming on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a narrative about Antonio's death that started to harden soon after he was killed.

It's basically a story about self-defense and how protesters had to shoot the white Jeep that Antonio was in. That was the only way to keep everyone else safe. But Antonio May Sr. never believed that story. He thinks the Seattle Police, and city leaders abandoned chop and left it to be guarded by self-appointed vigilantes who killed his son. For two years, he waited for answers from the police,

but he says they went silent. When we reached out to Seattle police to ask them when they'd last spoken with Antonio Sr., they declined to answer. In 2023, he filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Seattle. Last year, in an attempt to keep this case from going to trial, The city's attorney filed a ton of new evidence.

We had been following the case for a while, and suddenly there's this flurry of new stuff available to the public for the first time. Okay, this is Will. I'm at the King County Courthouse. I'm leaving the clerk's office. I had to go to a special back room in the courthouse to get it. I was handed a Manila envelope with a thumb drive inside. just downloaded some files from the courthouse that we haven't had yet.

Among these files is CCTV footage of the night Antonio was killed. I mean, the most important is a set of videos made by a forensic analyst who looked at a whole bunch of footage from the night of the shooting and put it all together and sort of analyzed what happened. It's a lot. So we call in David Gutman of the Seattle Times, our friend, our reporting partner, and someone who has consistently been better at the computer than us. David took a look at this footage, and then he gathered us around a laptop to show us what he had found. So this is obviously the video analysis submitted by the city of Seattle. The file that was sent to us is a screen with eight different video screens.

on it. These videos come from all over the place. One's a security cam outside a karaoke bar. There's a live stream. There's a home security camera. And it's minutes before Antonio is shot. They're all synced up, so they all play at the same time. I'm going to press play.

We're focused on one camera feed in particular. It shows a small street parallel to the park. And it picks up just after the boys drove off the playfield in the Jeep. Protesters have now really begun to panic about a car attack. And now I'm going to slow down the speed for this next part. We're going super slow-mo now now here. I didn't even know you could do this. This is like James Bond.

It's like James Bond shit. The Jeep is driving down a narrow side street. And then... See where my mouse is right here. Another car creeps into view. It's the Pathfinder. That's the car Roshaila was in when she was trying to save Antonio. Silver Pathfinder. It just pulled up this way and paused it.

David freezes on a frame to show us something. We've been watching videos of this evening for four or five years, and you see something that you don't see on any of those videos. See this right here? That's a long gun out of the front seat. Holy shit. Holy shit. Wait, wait, wait. There's a gun pointing out the front passenger window of the Pathfinder. So here it is again.

It looks like the long gun coming out of the front, firing backwards. And now it looks... A few frames later, there's another gun coming out of a different window. The backseat is a white sleeve. And this one's tougher to see, but I think there's... is a handgun in that white sleeve. I'm almost certain that's Zay Huncho. Zay H-U-S-H-H-H-O.

Huncho is the teenager we saw pop up in Omari's live stream, the kid with the bloody white sweatshirt. Is this the same guy holding a handgun out of the Pathfinder? And then a bunch of shots ring out. More shots fired, more shots fired, more shots fired, more shots fired. More shots fired, more shots fired.

These shots are coming from the Pathfinder. the Pathfinder. The Jeep races off camera with the Pathfinder behind it, still firing out the windows. They disappear into the night. The video ends. And we're just sitting there taking in the significance of what we just watched. This is the first time we've ever seen a gun pointed out of that Silver Nissan. Am I right about that?

Yeah. What this video analysis shows flips our understanding of what happened in the lead-up to Antonio's death. That clip that's been around for years of a live-streamer hearing gunshots and broadcasting that someone in the white Jeep was shooting at tents, what that live-streamer was actually hearing was people in the Pathfinder shooting at the White Jeep with Antonio and Robert inside. So here it is again. More shots fired, more shots fired. More shots fired. More shots fired. The white sleeve.

Wow. We realize these gunshots are probably not the ones that killed Antonio. The shooting just looks so erratic. It's hard to imagine these shots hitting anyone in the white sheep. But we now think that Zay Huncho and someone else were shooting at the boys from the moment they drove off the playfield. Five days after the shooting, Zay Huncho was arrested at a protest march for obstructing a police officer.

The arresting officer said, that he recognized him as a homicide suspect in Antonio's killing, but he was never charged. David figured out what we believe is Zay Huncho's real name and spent months tracking him down to ask him about this video. Zay Huncho's been in and out of jails and a mental health facility for years now. unrelated to anything at CHOP. Hi, my name's David Gutman.

I'm a reporter with the Seattle Times, and I'm wondering just if there is a way to do an in-person visit with an inmate as a reporter. We haven't been able to interview him. But there is still someone who was in the Pathfinder that night who we can talk to. Hey, it's Will. Can you hear you okay?

All right, sweet. Are you okay if I record? this real quick. I call up Rishaila to ask her, were you in the Pathfinder while it was shooting at the Bois? One piece of this that I have to ask you about is basically

the Silver Nissan Pathfinder that you and a few other people were in earlier in the night. The city filed a video in court shows a couple of people shooting from that Nissan Pathfinder at the White Jeep.

It shows a guy, I think, is Zay Huncho shooting out of the rear passenger window. Yeah, I've heard that that, I've heard that. So to my understanding, the white Jeep, we, that vehicle, we weren't following that vehicle. We, there was, so we did not see that. Roshaila tells me she was not chasing the white Jeep. Jeep, Antonio and Robert were in.

The top area. Prior to the shooting, there were two vehicles on the field driving around trying to run protesters over. One of them was a, it was like a dark color, like a dark blue or something like that. Me and the other protesters that were in the vehicle were following that car. Okay. And you were following the darker colored vehicle that. That was...

Yeah, it was like a SUV-type car. I want to say it was like a blue color, but I don't know for sure. But video from the playfield doesn't show another vehicle. I ask her, was she in the Pathfinder at all? Before the crash and the gunshots and everything. What car were you in again? We were in... Whose car was I, yeah?

It was silver or gray or something. I believe it was a Pathfinder. I don't know. Were you in a car while people were shooting at Antonio that night? No. Okay. Do you know anyone who was shooting at Antonio that night? Honestly, I don't know.

Okay. It's very likely that I had been in contact with people throughout the summer during those protests. and some of those people were the people that, you know, were shooting. So here's Rashaela's story of that night. She does remember being in a silver pathfinder, but while she was in that car, no one was shooting. If that's true, it means any shooting happened before she got in. And then the Pathfinder swung around, picked her up,

and they went off after a different vehicle that might have been blue. I'm getting the feeling that maybe you have some doubts about this. Well, I guess what I'll say is that for all of this to be true, this chain of events, the Pathfinder, shooting, chasing, swinging back around to pick Rashila up, and then going off after this other vehicle, would have had to have happened in about one minute. Technically, there is enough time for all of that to happen. That's true. Like, we cannot disprove Rishila's account.

And she has stuck to this story in multiple conversations with me and in court under oath in Antonio's senior's wrongful death case. But this is a very short amount of time for all of this to happen. There was more we wanted to talk with Rishaila about. A couple days after Antonio's death, the city dismantled Chup. and police arrested a bunch of protesters for refusing to leave. Rishaila was one of them. In the arrest reports that day, you were among those 30-something people that they arrested. And there's this weird thing where they, so they said that they found in your pocket a shell casing and a bullet.

Rishaila says this isn't true, that police never found a bullet or a shell casing in her pocket. Now I do know that stuff was removed from the scene. I do know that people did pick up casings and whatnot as well. But I never had any of that on me. It's hard to know the truth about this because the same police report says the bullet and the shell casing were lost while officers drove protesters to jail. There was something else, too. It turns out, the Pathfinder had been stuiting. stolen before the shooting.

And the Pathfinder's owner told police he had been chased by a group of people that included a protest leader named Shy. Shy was one of Rashila's nicknames at Chop. Do you remember this guy at all and confiscating his Nissan? No. Okay. I've never taken something from somebody that didn't. belong to me. Taking somebody's vehicle is absurd.

That's absurd. Even though she says she was not in the Pathfinder when people were shooting, she does know why they were shooting. When all the chaos was ensuing, I had a walkie in the vehicle, and it was said over the walkies, you know, take the tires out. You know, stop the car, take the tires out. Rishaila doubles down on what protesters have been telling us this whole time, that they opened fire to defend themselves from a threat.

So our security team was not aiming to kill. That was not the goal. That was not the purpose. They were really trying to just stop that vehicle from hurting anybody, you know. But were the boys in the White Jeep really trying to hurt protesters? Now that we know the Pathfinder was shooting at the White Jeep almost immediately, there's a new possibility. It seems like these gunshots from the Pathfinder may have contributed to a panic with protesters believing Antonio and Robert were the ones shooting.

Did that lead to the second round of shooting that happened a couple minutes later? The one that almost certainly killed Antonio. As we combed through all of the videos we had to figure out what happened the night of the shooting, this one person kept popping up. A protester with long flowing hair who was known for riding around chop on his bike. Right there on the bike. Oh yeah, you see his long hair. In the seconds after the Jeep crashes and the boys are shot, in that eerie silence that Rishaila said seemed to last forever, This figure on the bike rolls across our screen.

He stops and he looks at the shooting scene. He stares at this spot we can't see where bullets were just flying. What does he see there? It turns out, I know who he is. Sidney interviewed him back in 2020. It was that night. It was just extremely chaotic. We track him down.

Do you remember this? That's my bike. Yeah. Standing right here, that's me. And he did see something that night. I can't believe you found that. That's on the next episode of We Keep Us Safe. You can find new footage of the Nissan Pathfinder from the night of the shooting on our website.

Visit npr.org slash chop to see that video. We Keep Us Safe from NPR's Embedded is a collaboration with the Seattle Times and KUOW. The series is reported and written by me. Sydney Brownstone, David Gutman, and Will James. This episode was edited by Luis Traeus and Laura Grenius, with support from Katie Simon. This episode was produced by Dan Germa. Our senior producer is Adelina Lansianese. Additional reporting by Dan Germa and Omari Salisbury, who contributed recordings to this project.

Research and fact-checking by Danya Solomon and Miyoko Wolf. Jimmy Keely mastered the episode. Music by Audio Network, Audio Socket, Blue Dot Sessions, Romtine Arablui, Tom Pyle and Running Dog Music, and Universal Music Production. In the summer of 2020, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in Seattle. Six years later, his killing remains unsolved. Our investigation has uncovered new evidence and witnesses who say they've never talked to police. Listen to We Keep Us Safe, a new investigative docu series from KUOW, The Seattle Times, and Embedded. Search KUOW Focus, wherever you get podcasts.