Aaron Lynch family sues Fairfax police over McLean shooting in 2022

A specially trained officer arrived with a psychiatrist first, but they were unable to find Lynch, police said. When Lynch’s twin sister arrived shortly afterward, she said Lynch told her to call 911 for help.

This time, three police officers, who had no special training, came without a doctor, police reports say. As Lynch charged at one of the officers, waving a wine bottle, another officer shot him four times, including once in the neck from less than two feet away, a police auditor’s report said. Lynch died just outside the front door of his parents’ house on Arbor Lane, his sister standing nearby.

A county spokesman said Wednesday that Fairfax would not comment on pending litigation. The Fairfax District Attorney ruled in April that Officer Edward George’s shooting was legally justified because George had reasonable grounds to fear that the other officer might have been bludgeoned with the wine bottle or stabbed with a broken piece of the bottle. Lynch apparently dropped the bottle before he was shot, but George could not have seen that in the darkness, the prosecutor said.

Patrick Regan, a lawyer for the Lynch family, said the lawsuit was filed “because the police have so far refused to accept responsibility for the senseless killing of this young man.” He said he plans to have “everyone involved” testify under oath and a leading police expert will testify that “it was not necessary for the officer to fire the fatal shot.”

In a county of 1.1 million people, Fairfax County police had not shot more than two people in any year since 2015. But in 2022, officers shot six people, two fatally, and then an officer shot a suspected shoplifter at Tysons Corner in early 2023, prompting Police Chief Kevin Davis to commission an outside study of police shootings. The study, by the Police Executive Research Forum, found in April 2023 that only a third of police had received detailed training in dealing with people in crisis situations without a weapon, called Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT).

Fairfax County police said last month that their entire department has now completed ICAT training and 44 percent have completed crisis intervention training, which provides more detailed guidance on dealing with people with mental health issues. About 20 percent of all fatal police shootings nationwide in recent years have involved people in a mental health crisis, according to a Washington Post database.

Police also said they now have eight “co-responder teams” on call around the clock, including an officer and a psychiatrist from the county’s Community Services Board. None of the doctors were present when the three officers tasered and shot Lynch, police said.

The lawsuit, which seeks compensatory and punitive damages, alleges the three officers acted negligently by using deadly force when it was not necessary and by entering the home without waiting for mental health personnel or making a plan to deal with Lynch. Davis is accused of failing to develop adequate training and policies for dealing with people in a mental health crisis.

Two previous police shootings in Fairfax County resulted in large payments to the victim’s family. After John Geer was shot in 2013 while standing unarmed in the front door of his Springfield home, the county paid his family $2.95 million and Officer Adam Torres pleaded guilty to manslaughter. In 2011, the county paid $2 million to the family of optometrist Salvatore J. Culosi, who was standing unarmed outside an undercover officer’s truck when he was shot by Officer Deval Bullock. The Fairfax District Attorney found Culosi’s killing was justified.

The second trial of a Fairfax police officer for a fatal shooting in which Sergeant Wesley Shifflett killed Timothy Johnson is scheduled for September. No civil suit has been filed in that case.