City wants to settle with Washington family over 2020 CPD accident

CHICAGO (WBBM NEWS RADIO) — A 15-year-old girl who was run over by a Chicago police car during the 2020 George Floyd protests is set to receive large compensation.

On the agenda for Monday’s City Council Finance Committee meeting is a $525,000 settlement proposal for the family of Astarte Washington.

As she and her brother tried to catch a bus, Washington encountered a group of protesters near 111th Avenue and Michigan.

That’s according to her family’s lawsuit, which says that after complying with police orders to get on the ground, she was run over by a patrol car that an officer failed to put in park.

The lawsuit they filed said she suffered a broken hip when an officer failed to put his patrol car in park and ran over the eighth-grader.

She was lying on the ground because the police had told everyone in the area to do so.

Robert Fakhouri, an attorney representing the Washington family, acknowledged that CPD officers were under enormous pressure that fateful day as they tried to control the unruly and violent crowd — but that doesn’t justify “the recklessness of an officer while responding to this scene.”

The officer is “responsible for keeping the chaos under control” but also “liable for the chaos he creates,” Fakhouri said.

“When they responded to the scene … they caused chaos,” he added. “There is no justification or excuse.”

There was no looting in the area, the lawyer said. Video evidence shows there was “more police presence than civilians” in the area, the lawyer said.

Astarte “not only complied with the officer’s order,” Fakhouri said, but was also “so afraid, because she’s someone who grew up on the South Side of Chicago,” that she obeyed police because she believed, “Should have.” “If she didn’t do it, she might have lost her life.”

Chicago Sun-Times Media Wire/Fran Spielman contributed to this report.

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