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Family of man shot holding pen sues King County Sheriff's Office

The lawsuit says Tommy Le was facing a mental crisis and needed help when he was fatally shot by a King County Sheriff's deputy.
Credit: KING
Tommy Le, 20, was fatally shot by deputies after he refused to drop what the deputies believed was a knife but was actually a pen.

The family of Tommy Le, an unarmed 20-year-old man who was shot to death by a deputy, has filed a federal lawsuit against the King County sheriff's office.

Deputy Cesar Molina shot Le last June while responding to reports that Le was threatening people with "a knife or some sort of sharp object," prompting one homeowner to fire a shot to try to scare him off. The sheriff's office later said Le was holding a black ball-point pen, not a knife, when he was shot.

"He was unarmed and he was going to graduate that morning," said his aunt, Xuyen Le, during a Tuesday press conference.

"We couldn't believe it," she said. "That's not our Tommy. We told the detective that he was mistaken for somebody else that's not our Tommy."

The King County Medical Examiner's Office determined Le had been shot twice in the back and once in the back of the arm. The family's attorney, Jeffery Campiche, says the 120-pound Le posed no threat.

"There's never been a retraction by the Sheriff's Office," said Campiche. "They eventually said well maybe he had a pointy object, and a pen does qualify as a pointy object. But there is a question whether he had anything in his hand."

The lawsuit said Le was facing a mental health crisis and needed help. Le had a trace amount of LSD in his system, but the lawyer says it wasn't enough to cause impairment.

The King County Sheriff's Office declined to comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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