A federal judge has allowed excessive force claims against Littleton and Englewood police officers to proceed, stemming from a shootout and pursuit of carjacking suspects that left one woman dead and another paralyzed.

“The Court finds that these facts, as alleged, demonstrate a degree of outrageousness and harm that could be construed as conscience-shocking depending on the context, to be revealed through further discovery,” wrote Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer of the U.S. District Court for Colorado in a Sept. 30 opinion.

According to court filings, Littleton police received a report of a stolen vehicle on June 29, 2017. After officers sighted it close to midnight, multiple patrol vehicles began to follow the vehicle, until one of them struck the rear and caused it to spin and come to a stop on South Santa Fe Drive in Denver.

Officer Anthony Guzman reportedly exited his car, walked toward the vehicle and shot at least nine times into it without warning. Other officers present followed suit, despite there being no evident threat from the occupants.

Marta Sanchez, who was in the driver’s seat, began to move the vehicle slowly. The officers again struck the vehicle and caused it to stop. Guzman and Officer Joseph Carns allegedly continued to shoot without warning, prompting Sanchez to again drive away. Guzman struck the vehicle a final time and fired approximately 21 more shots.

Sanchez received 14 bullet wounds, which paralyzed her. The police also shot passengers Dominic Martinez and Stephanie Lopez, with Lopez dying from a shot to the head.

After an investigation, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann declined to charge Guzman, Carns and Officer Luke McGrath of the Littleton department. She noted that Guzman feared for his life after he stood in front of the vehicle and heard it “rev extremely high” and advance toward him. 

Carns described to investigators how he saw one of the passengers reaching for something on the floorboard and his belief that the car had run over Guzman. The officers seemed aware that one of the suspects in the vehicle had fired a gun during the earlier carjacking.

McCann concluded that Sanchez’s continued attempts to evade police “demonstrated a brazenness that justified the officers’ fears that the suspects posed a significant risk of danger not only to the officers, but to the public at large.”

Sanchez, Martinez and the estate of Lopez filed a federal complaint alleging a deprivation of their rights, negligence and wrongful death. They also sued the cities of Littleton and Englewood, whose officers were involved in the apprehension, for liability. 

Brimmer dismissed the negligence claim, finding it fell outside the statute of limitations. He also found that an excessive force claim against the Littleton officers based on the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures should not proceed. Given that a “seizure” would mean officers prevented free movement, Brimmer reasoned the plaintiffs never submitted to the officers’ authority, and therefore did not undergo a seizure.

“The momentary halt of a car during a police chase is insufficient to demonstrate submission to authority,” he wrote. “Plaintiffs’ allegations that they only began driving again to escape defendants’ gunfire does not change the Court’s analysis.”

However, the judge allowed the plaintiffs’ claims to proceed based on their argument that the officers demonstrated “a degree of outrageousness and a magnitude of potential or actual harm that is truly conscience shocking” — the standard that precedent requires.

“Plaintiffs have alleged that, generally, defendants fired dozens of gunshots into an occupied vehicle, where the vehicle was motionless and was not moving toward the officers or any other person, where the officers felt no threat or danger to themselves, and where the officers saw no weapon possessed by the vehicle’s occupants, which led to one occupant’s physical injuries, one occupant’s paralysis, and the other occupant’s death,” Brimmer summarized in greenlighting that part of the lawsuit.

He also allowed an excessive force claim to proceed against Englewood Officer Brain Martinez, who joined the Littleton officers during the third and final stop of the vehicle.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs and for the two cities’ officers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is Sanchez et al. v. Littleton et al.