DENVER — The family of an unarmed Black man who was shot and killed at an off-site DIA parking lot back in May is now suing the officer who fired his weapon.
"This is hard. My only child is gone," said Taushica Carter, Rashaud Johnson's mom, during a news conference Tuesday. "For 32 years, I had the pleasure of loving him, and being loved back."
The lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Rathod | Mohamedbhai LLC law firm on behalf of the family, comes more than two months after the Aurora Police Department released edited body camera video of Johnson's shooting and Chief Todd Chamberlain held a news conference regarding the incident.
"The reason we're all here today is that Rashaud's effervescent life was cut short when he was shot and killed by Officer Mills of the Aurora Police Department, despite the fact that Rashaud posed no imminent threat of serious bodily harm," said Neil Sandhu, an attorney with Rathod | Mohamedbhai LLC. "On May 12, 2025, Rashaud wasn't acting himself for reasons that are not immediately clear, and reasons we can't really ever know, because Rashaud was killed that day."
- Denver7 obtained a copy of the lawsuit, which you can read in the embed below:
"It was the hottest day of the year. Rashaud wasn't wearing shoes, and in the midst of walking across the blacktop, he was unable to answer the questions that were posed to him by the people that worked at The Parking Spot. Over the next few hours, what became clear was exactly what The Parking Spot employees said to the police when they called them, Rashaud simply needed help," Sandhu added.
During Tuesday's news conference, Sandhu said Johnson's family chose to sue Aurora Police Officer Brandon Mills for several reasons.
"Undoubtedly, there's two failures here. One is the team responsible for dispatching the officers, which could have, instead of sending a single officer, sent somebody who is trained as a mental health professional or a team of officers who better be able to respond," Sandhu said. "It's certainly on Officer Mills's shoulders too, because he decided to shoot and kill Rashaud despite the fact that he posed no imminent threat of serious bodily injury."
He continued, "I would not frame it as a system failing Officer Mills individually, but I will say that the systemic nature of Aurora, failure to dispatch both mental health professionals and teams of officers has resulted in robberies, robberies of us from community members that should still be here today," he added.
Chief Chamberlain said during the news conference in which the bodycam footage was shown that despite the fact Johnson was unarmed, the officer responded as he should have.
Body camera video showed Officer Mills did try using both a baton and taser to de-escalate the situation with Johnson, before ultimately shooting and killing him after a "tussle."
- Warning: The body camera footage in the video player below could be disturbing to some. Viewer discretion is advised.
"I think the important part is that the absence of a weapon does not mean that there's an absence of danger, by any stretch of the imagination, and there's still a deadly threat, and that deadly threat continued to unfold in this event," Chief Chamberlain said.
The chief defended his officer at the time, saying that what occurred that day was nothing short of a tragedy, "but it's a tragedy also if that officer would have lost his life because he would have been disarmed, or if he was to such a point that he was incapacitated, that he could no longer fight, that he could no longer maintain his weapon, that he could no longer maintain himself."
Denver7 reached out to the City of Aurora after learning about the lawsuit filed Monday against Officer Mills.
Aurora City Attorney Pete Schulte said the following in a statement:
“The city of Aurora, which includes the Aurora Police Department (APD), is aware of the lawsuit filed by the law firm representing the estate of Rashaud Johnson. The 17th Judicial District Critical Incident Response Team’s (CIRT) independent investigation into the May 12 shooting is ongoing, as is an internal administrative investigation by APD. It will be several weeks, if not months, before the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office releases its findings in this case. Like any critical incident, there are important facts that will be revealed by these investigations that are not depicted in a single body camera video. Now that this lawsuit has been filed my office will defend the city and the officer in this case.”
Attorney's representing Johnson's family said Tuesday, however, that despite the 17th Judicial District Attorney's Critical Incident Response Team's independent investigation into the shooting not being complete yet, they already knew the outcome.
"We don't need to see it. I mean, we know what happened, right? And it's going to be the same old thing. The officer was scared, I feared for my life, and I killed him. I mean, that's what they're trying to say. It usually works. Usually changes public perception," said Qusair Mohamedbhai, a founding partner of Rathod |Mohamedbhai LLC. "We know what happened. I don't know why it takes them months and months and months to come out and say that we did nothing wrong."
When asked what the goal behind the lawsuit against Officer Mills was, Mohamedbhai said he simply wants to represent his clients, Johnson's parents.
"We're here to serve our clients, and we're here to seek to get the justice that they want us to get," he said. "I don't know what it's going to take for change to be made. It's obviously not body counts, because it's not changing overall."
Denver7 also spoke with Stacey Harvey, an affiliate professor of criminal justice and criminology at MSU. Harvey watched the body camera video provided by Aurora police back in late May and listened to the accompanying press conference by Chief Chamberlain that day.
She said she felt the actions taken by Officer Mills on the day of the shooting seemed justified.
"I think he responded how he should have. It's a tragedy," Harvey said. "I'm not sure why the suspect escalated it so quickly and just didn't respond to the verbal commands from the officer. It was a very minor crime, but the officer couldn't just walk away. He'd been summoned there and then engaged that person, and that person escalated it, despite the officer really, in my opinion, trying hard to de-escalate it."
As for Johnson's family, they made it clear during Tuesday's news conference they want justice for what happened to their son.
"They tried to paint a picture as though this was a wayward person or a troubled person, and he wasn't," said Chris Johnson, Rashuad's dad. "The main thing that we focus on is who our son was and who our son was not, and he was not the portrait painted."
