SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - San Diego County and its sheriff’s department will have to face accusations a deputy shot a woman with a rubber bullet while her children were protesting police violence.
Federal judge Marilyn Huff denied the county and other defendants’ motion to dismiss on May 27, rejecting arguments that officers did not personally breach a duty of care to plaintiff Michelle Horton and that she failed to allege facts showing the personal involvement of the named officer defendants.
Horton says the shot came from within a group of officers that included defendants Jacob MacLeod and Evan Sobzcak.
“In the complaint, Plaintiff alleges that law enforcement officers, believed to include Defendants Sobzcak and MacLeod, shot her in the breast with a less-lethal projectile while driving past her even though she was unarmed; not engaged in any criminal, raucous, or destructive activity; did not pose any threat of harm to anyone; and was not resisting or fleeing arrest,” Huff wrote.
“Plaintiff also alleges that she was not immersed in a crowd of unruly protestors, nor was she near anyone engaged in criminal, raucous, or destructive activity. These allegations are sufficient to allege a claim for excessive force against Defendants Sobzcak and MacLeod.”
Horton says she was standing on the corner of Spring St. and University Ave. in La Mesa waiting to meet her children on May 23 of last year, when she was struck by a non-lethal projectile form a law enforcement officer involved in a drive-by shooting.
Horton and her children were participating in a peaceful mass protest regarding the death of George Floyd.
In an event described as "out of the blue" by the lawsuit, officers drove by in a marked police vehicle and fired what is suspected to be a rubber bullet at the plaintiff, she claims.
La Mesa’s police department is also a defendant in the lawsuit.