BOISE, Idaho — The City of Boise has settled wrongful death lawsuits filed by Zachary Snow's mother, Melissa Walton. Snow was shot and killed by police on Oct. 27, 2021, while he was suicidal and having a mental health crisis.
Boise settled the lawsuits for $190,000 "after both parties evaluated the merits of the case and the resources required for extensive litigation," according to a news release.
Walton said she did not want to settle. Rather, she hoped for systemic change, including more training for officers responding to mental health crises.
However, she said the emotional and financial burdens of legal action became too much.
"My attorneys kept trying to reiterate to me that the time spent ... all that stuff I needed to weigh it out for my mental health, for my sanity for what I [wanted] to do," she said. "Constantly going down to Boise for depositions and new information ... it just was destroying my family."
In the lawsuits, Walton claimed the officers acted contrary to training and standard police practices and violated her son's right to be "free from unreasonable seizures" during the incident that ended with two officers shooting, and ultimately killing, Snow in a vacant lot near the intersection of Capitol Boulevard and Myrtle Street.
In 2021, Walton had called dispatch to notify police that her son was on top of a building in downtown Boise. She later spoke with an officer, saying he was depressed, off his medication, and was unarmed.
According to a Boise Police Dept. summary of the incident, officers planned to check on his welfare and arrest him on what they had been told was an outstanding felony failure-to-appear warrant.
KTVB reported, however, that Ada County Dispatch provided responding officers with incorrect information. Snow had a misdemeanor failure-to-appear warrant, not a felony warrant.
Officers fired at Snow when, according to the BPD summary, Snow pulled a black object from his waistband, "took a shooter's stance," and pointed it at officers, imitating that he had a gun. However, the investigation also found that the object Snow had pulled from his waistband was a small portable speaker, not a weapon.
Gem County Prosecuting Attorney Erick B. Thomson, who reviewed the Critical Incident Task Force investigation into the shooting of Snow, determined in April that the officers acted in self-defense and would not face criminal charges.
Snow was 26 years old at the time of his death. Doctors had diagnosed Snow with antisocial personality disorder when he was 18, and Snow was prescribed medication as a result, Walton told KTVB in 2021.
"I just wish they could have seen in my son the value of him and his worth, and that he wasn't a stereotype," Walton said.
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