Antonio Mays Jr. was 16 years old when he traveled roughly a thousand miles to Seattle in the summer of 2020 to join the protests that had taken over Capitol Hill. He arrived at the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest — CHOP — and was shot and killed there less than a week later. Nobody has been charged.
That killing is now the focus of We Keep Us Safe, a podcast from NPR, KUOW and The Seattle Times, published June 18, 2026. The series examines what happened inside CHOP and why Mays’s case has gone unsolved for six years.
Mays had crossed state lines to be part of the racial justice movement that swept the country after George Floyd’s death — one of the younger participants drawn to a protest zone that briefly captured national attention before Seattle officials cleared it. His death inside that zone raised immediate questions about who was responsible for safety there, and those questions haven’t been answered in court.
The case remains open. NPR didn’t report any arrests or named suspects in connection with the shooting.
Originally reported by NPR. Read the original report.
