The wife of a black man killed during a confrontation with Inglewood police last year filed a wrongful death suit against the city Thursday, alleging that her late husband was shot in the back and that race played a role in his death.
Quiana Kemp, the widow of Paul Ray Kemp Jr., filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. The complaint also alleges negligence, civil rights violations, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
An Inglewood police spokesman could not immediately be reached.
Paul Kemp, 40, of Gardena, was killed about 3 a.m. last June 27 near the intersection of 113th Street and Doty Avenue. The suit states he was “shot and/or tasered” by police and struck at least six times. He was hit “several times in the back,” according to the lawsuit.
The shooting was unprovoked because Paul Kemp was unarmed and not a threat to the officers, the suit states.
The suit further alleges the officers “violated decedent’s civil rights and subjected him to physical violence… because of harbored racial prejudice against decedent because he was African-American.”
The officers involved in the incident were not properly trained and were “prone to fire their firearms without reasonable justification,” the suit says.
— City News Service