The family of Ricky Cobb II, the 33-year-old Black man who was fatally shot by a Minnesota state trooper last summer, announced on Wednesday a federal lawsuit against the troopers involved in the incident.
The civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages names troopers Ryan Londregan and Brett Seide and alleges they violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments via unreasonable seizure and use of excessive force when the troopers tried to forcibly remove Cobb from the vehicle and fired shots into the car.
Cobb was killed in July during a traffic stop on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without lights. During the stop, the troopers learned that Cobb II had allegedly violated a protective order in Ramsey County and moved to arrest him.
The troopers – Seide on the driver’s side and Londregan on the passenger door side – opened Cobb’s car doors in an effort to pull him out of the vehicle. When the vehicle began moving forward Londregan fired two shots that hit Cobb in the torso, killing him.
The news conference announcing the lawsuit was attended by Cobb’s parents, siblings and the mothers of his three children, who talked about how their children are dealing with the loss of their father.
“Imagine your children walking out the door every day to go out to school and having to say goodbye to an urn instead of their actual parent,” said Danielle Pickett, the mother of two of Cobb’s sons. “They don’t have a father and we’re left to raise little boys without their dad being present.”
Cobb family attorney Harry Daniels told reporters Wednesday that the suit does not name the state of Minnesota due to the Eleventh amendment in the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits federal courts from hearing certain lawsuits brought by individuals against a U.S. state. The lawsuit differs in the regard from suits brought against the city of Minneapolis in addition to the officers involved in George Floyd’s murder, and the suit brought against Brooklyn Center in Daunte Wright’s death, which ended in settlements of $27 million and $3.5 million, respectively.
Daniels, along with attorneys Bakari Sellers and F. Clayton Tyler, did not rule out filing a lawsuit in state court as well, being well within the six-year statute of limitations to do so.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has been under fire since late January after bringing criminal charges against Londregan, which include second-degree unintentional murder, first-degree assault and second-degree manslaughter.
Several state and congressional Republican lawmakers, as well as the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, have called on Gov. Tim Walz to take the case from Moriarty after claims from Londregan’s attorneys that Moriarty ignored testimony from a use of force expert that said the trooper did not use excessive force. Moriarty’s office has denied those claims.
Walz has commented publicly multiple times on the case and whether to remove it from Moriarty’s office, which the governor has done once before with the case involving the killing of Zaria McKeever.
McKeever, 23, was killed in November 2022 when her adult ex-boyfriend arranged for two teenage brothers, ages 15 and 17 at the time, to kill McKeever’s new partner but one of the teens killed McKeever instead. In that case, Walz reassigned it to Attorney General Keith Ellison after McKeever’s family expressed concern that a proposed plea deal from Moriarty’s office for the teens was too lenient.
The governor told reporters on Wednesday that while Ellison has not yet requested the case be taken away from the Hennepin County attorney, he’s still considering whether to make that move.
“We want justice to be served; we want fairness,” Walz said. “I take this move on removing a case, either at the request of the attorney general or by our move, very seriously so I think we’re still in that holding pattern.”
Sellers said Wednesday that he’s disappointed and “pissed off” at the politicization of the case and the calls from elected officials to reassign the case. Despite that, he said they’ll continue to seek justice for the family and that he’s confident Walz will make “the right decision.”
“Politics aside, we’ll let people get reelected, we’ll let people support who they support, but we stand squarely on our 10 toes and we will go toe to toe with whomever is in front of us to get to that goal of justice,” he said.
Mohamed Ibrahim
Mohamed Ibrahim is MinnPost’s environment and public safety reporter. He can be reached at mibrahim@minnpost.com.
