In Hawatmeh v. City of Henderson, published November 7, 2025, the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. section 1983. A family’s neighbor invaded the family’s apartment, killed the mother and a housekeeper, shot a daughter multiple times, and then took the 12-year-old son hostage. The man entered the family car, sat in the driver’s seat, and forced the boy into the passenger seat. The man took the boy’s cellphone, called 911, and engaged in a disjointed, delusional 17-minute conversation with the dispatcher while threatening the boy with his gun. Officers arrived and stationed themselves around the parked car so that it could not leave. The suspect did not attempt to move the vehicle. A sergeant told both the man and the boy to put their hands up and exit the vehicle. The sergeant saw a gun, and that the boy had his hands up. The man, with the phone on, told the boy to open his mouth, and announced he would shoot the boy in the brain. The sergeant told an officer to “[t]ake the shot if you have it. The officer fired a single shot that killed the man. Two seconds later, the other officers present fired at the vehicle as the sergeant repeatedly yelled “[s]top” and “cease fire.” This second round of shots killed the boy. The boy’s family alleged the officers used excessive force in violation of the 4th Amendment and violated substantive due process rights under the 14th Amendment. The district court dismissed the claims with prejudice. The district court concluded that the officers did not violate the 4th or 14th Amendments, and were alternatively entitled to qualified immunity because the law did not clearly establish a violation.
The 9th Circuit agreed that the officers did not violate the 4th or 14th Amendments. An excessive force claim under the 4th Amendment requires that a seizure took place. A police officer can seize a person either through a show of authority that in some way restrains the person’s liberty or by using force to apprehend the person. Here, under the facts alleged, the officers never seized the boy. Officers do not seize an individual for 4th Amendment purposes when they employ control tactics or force in an attempt to rescue him from an active hostage situation. The court rejected an attempt to analogize the boy to a passenger during a traffic stop who is seized if he would not have felt free to terminate the encounter with the police. While the boy was not free to terminate this encounter, that was due to the hostage-taker’s actions, not the officers’. The officers also did not seize him by using force to shoot him. Neither accidental force nor force intentionally applied for some other purpose is a seizure. A seizure requires force with an intent to restrain. The officers were not objectively manifesting an intent to restrain the boy, they were attempting to save his life. As a matter of law, a two-second window between the first and second set of shots is insufficient to to transform a situation from one initiated and controlled by
a hostage-taker to one initiated and controlled by police. Even if the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged a constitutional violation, the officers would be entitled to qualified immunity because the boy’s right to be free of excessive force during an active hostage situation was not clearly established at the time of the violation. There were no on-point or analogous cases identified by the plaintiffs or the court. As to the 14th Amendment claim, because this was a “snap judgment” situation, the officers’ conduct could be found to “shock the conscience” and thus give rise to a substantive due process claim only if the officers acted with a purpose to harm unrelated to legitimate law enforcement objectives. No allegation showed that the officers had anything but legitimate law enforcement objectives in mind when they fired. Again, even if the officers did act with deliberate indifference, they would be entitled to qualified immunity because their conduct did not violate clearly-established 14th Amendment rights.
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