Lawyers who filed a wrongful death suit against the city and Portland police after an officer fatally shot 17-year-old Quanice Hayes want a judge to throw out the city’s defense that it was Hayes’ alleged criminal activity and his mother’s negligence that led to his death.

“While Quanice Hayes may have been subject to lawful arrest, he did not deserve a death sentence,’’ attorneys J. Ashlee Albies and Jesse Merrithew wrote in a motion filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland. Albies and Merrithew represent the teen’s estate.

They accused the city of character assassination and have urged U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta not to allow the city’s defense that partly blames Quanice Hayes and his mother for his death.

They argue it will detract from the central question in the case, which they framed as: what happened in the moments before Officer Andrew Hearst “shot an unarmed Black teen in the head while (the teen was) on his knees from 15 feet away.’’

The civil rights suit accuses Hearst of using excessive force when he shot Hayes three times with an AR-15 rifle on Feb. 9, 2017, as police confronted Hayes outside a Northeast Portland home. Hayes wasn’t a threat when he was killed, the suit alleges.

Officers discovered Hayes, a suspect in an armed robbery and attempted carjacking earlier that morning, in an alcove in front of the home and ordered him to keep his hands up but crawl toward officers on the driveway and then lie down with his hands to his side, according to grand jury testimony.

When Hayes appeared to reach toward his waistband, Hearst fired, killing Hayes, police said. Hayes died at the scene from one gunshot above his forehead on the right side of his head, one near the bottom of his left rib cage and one to his torso, according to an autopsy.

The suit alleges Hearst and fellow Officer Robert Wullbrandt were shouting contradictory commands at Hayes just before he was shot. Hearst testified that he never saw Hayes with a gun, but believed Hayes was the suspect in the earlier holdup of a man in his car. The man described his assailant as holding a tan pistol. Officers found a black and tan airsoft pistol in a flower bed about 2 feet from Hayes’ body, they said.

The city has defended Hearst’s fatal shots as “objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances,’’ saying Hayes’ conduct created an immediate threat of death or serious injury to Hearst and fellow officers.

If anyone is at fault, it’s the 17-year-old because of his “own criminal, reckless and negligent actions,’’ city attorneys wrote in their response to the suit

Venus Hayes, whose 17-year-old son Quanice Hayes was shot and killed by Portland police, spoke publicly outside the Portland Building after a grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing by the officer who fired the fatal shots. March 21, 2017 (Beth Nakamura/Staff)

They identified 12 actions Quanice Hayes took that they claim led to his own demise, including carrying a replica handgun, robbing another man, ingesting cocaine the night before his encounter with police and failing to follow officers’ commands by running away from police.

“A reasonable person would have known that the criminal, reckless and negligent conduct described above … would increase the foreseeable risk of harm to himself or herself, and Mr. Hayes indeed suffered the type of harm that was reasonably foreseeable,’’ senior city attorney William Manlove wrote.

Neither the city nor police are at fault “because the death of Quanice Hayes was the sole and exclusive fault of Mr. Hayes,’’ the city’s response said.

Further, the city contends Quanice Hayes’ mother, Venus Hayes, failed to supervise her son or ensure other family members were properly monitoring him.

The plaintiff’s attorneys argue the city is trying to defend a police shooting by smearing Hayes and his mother.

At the time of the shooting, Venus Hayes was in inpatient drug treatment.

“The fact that African American males suffer an increased risk of death at the hands of police, as borne out by PPB’s own record when it comes to shooting deaths, should not be a basis for a comparative negligence foreseeability argument that places fault on the shoulders of a grieving mother or a deceased young black man,'' Albies and Merrithew wrote.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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