Broken Jaw, $2 Million: Anthony Evans Settles Civil-Rights Claim Against City of Austin Over 2020 BLM Protest Shooting
Won by FVF Law Firm.
Anthony Evans, struck in the jaw by an APD beanbag round while leaving a May 2020 protest, settled his federal civil-rights excessive-force claim against the City of Austin for $2 million, with Shawn Frazier of FVF Law serving as co-counsel alongside Jeff Edwards.
What happened
On the evening of May 31, 2020, Anthony Evans was walking away from a Black Lives Matter demonstration in downtown Austin when an Austin Police Department officer fired a beanbag shotgun round into the crowd. The round struck Evans in the head, shattering his jaw. The injury required surgery.
The shooting was not an isolated misjudgment. APD officers had fired the same type of ammunition into protest crowds the night before, on May 30, injuring multiple people. Despite knowing of those injuries, department leadership allowed the practice to continue. Evans filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit in the Western District of Texas against the City of Austin and the officer identified as responsible, APD Officer Kyle Felton, alleging excessive force and violations of his constitutional rights.
Shawn Frazier of FVF Law joined the case as co-counsel alongside attorney Jeff Edwards of Edwards Law. In a direct quote to Fox 7 Austin, Frazier explained the theory of the case: 'The police knew they had seriously injured people by shooting into crowds the day before, but did it again anyway.' That deliberate continuation of a known-harmful tactic was central to the civil-rights claims.
The Austin City Council voted in February 2022 to approve a $2 million settlement resolving Evans's claims. His case was one of two resolved together that day: the Council simultaneously approved an $8 million settlement for Justin Howell, another protester who suffered traumatic brain damage after being shot in the head at the same demonstrations. The combined $10 million approval was reported by KUT, Austin's NPR affiliate, which tracked the city's growing protest-related litigation costs.
TopVerdict ranked the Evans settlement among the top 20 personal-injury settlements in Texas for 2022, listing co-counsel as Jeff Edwards of Edwards Law and Shawn Frazier of FVF Law. Separately, a Travis County grand jury indicted 19 APD officers on aggravated assault charges in February 2022 in connection with the same protests, a criminal proceeding independent of the civil settlement.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Fox 7 Austin -- BLM demonstrator files police brutality lawsuit against APD officer (names Shawn Frazier as co-counsel with direct quote)
- 2.Fox 4 DFW -- BLM demonstrator files police brutality lawsuit against APD officer (corroborating article, also quotes Frazier)
- 3.KUT (Austin NPR) -- Austin approves $10 million in settlements for two men shot by police with less-lethal rounds (independent news coverage of City Council settlement approval, Feb. 17 2022)
- 4.TopVerdict -- Top 20 Personal Injury Settlements in Texas 2022, rank 12 (corroboration only; names Shawn Frazier of FVF Law and Jeff Edwards of Edwards Law as co-counsel)