Plaintiff Sues Tulsa Police for Shooting Him in the Neck

Tulsa, OKA Gulf War veteran is seeking neck injury compensation from the City of Tulsa and the Tulsa police officer who shot the veteran in the neck, allegedly without provocation. The victim is seeking a million dollars in neck injury compensation.

The plaintiff is identified as Nathan Boyd, an Army veteran from the Gulf War who suffered from depression. According to a report published in Tulsa World (4/22/16), Boyd had placed a call to a veteran’s crisis hotline and reportedly told the duty worker at the other end of the telephone that he intended to commit suicide by forcing police to shoot him.

According to the report, Boyd then drove to a QuikTrip store in East Tulsa, where police intercepted the suspect after they had been notified by Veterans Crisis Hotline staff.

The neck injury claim lawsuit filed by Boyd does not dispute the events leading up to the shooting, nor does the Tulsa Police Department. However, it is the events immediately following an instruction by the reporting officer for the plaintiff to exit his vehicle, over which the plaintiff in his neck injury claim and the Tulsa Police Department differ.

According to the Tulsa World report, Tulsa police had conveyed to local media that Boyd had exited his vehicle with a weapon in his hand that was later identified to be a pellet gun. The defendant then proceeded to fire at Boyd, striking him in the neck.

The neck injury lawsuit, however, disputes this. According to court documents, when officers asked him to exit his vehicle, Boyd claims he placed one weapon on the dashboard of his truck, in order to demonstrate to officers that he was disarming himself. Boyd claims he was in the process of placing a second weapon on the vehicle’s dashboard, when the defendant opened fire without provocation.

The plaintiff asserts he had not committed any serious crime, was in the process of surrendering his weapons and was not resisting. Boyd asserts he posed no immediate threat to the safety of the responding officers and, thus, was shot needlessly.

His neck injury compensation lawsuit also asserts officers lacked sufficient training when encountering individuals with mental health issues.

The incident in question happened November 4, 2014. According to a report broadcast by Fox News 23 Tulsa on that date, Boyd was hospitalized following emergency surgery and remained in critical condition on the night of the shooting. The plaintiff is seeking over a million dollars in neck injury compensation. Case information associated with the neck injury lawsuit was not immediately available.

Neck and back injuries can be amongst the most serious of injuries sustained to the human body given the association with the spine and central nervous system. Sometimes, what appears at the outset to be a relatively minor back or neck injury can have far-reaching, health-related consequences. Akin to issues affecting the neck, back injury compensation is often integral for ongoing medical costs going forward.