DENVER (KDVR) – A second federal lawsuit filed this week blames police for firing the shots that severely injured two protesters’ eyes during the George Floyd protests and riots in 2020.
The complaint was the second to be filed by the law offices of Baumgartner Law, LLC and Beem & Isley, P.C. after the Denver City Council voted on Monday to settle a similar case with a different protester for $500,000.
In the suit, attorneys allege that Nick Orlin and Shawn Murphy were both targeted by police who fired projectiles at them.
“Plaintiff Orlin has lost about half of his vision,” said the lawsuit, explaining that Orlin is “partially blinded” in his left eye.
“Plaintiff Murphy experienced immediate, excruciating pain, was shocked, stunned, terrified, and rendered immobile as blood drained and flesh hung from his left eye and face,” the suit claims.
Orlin and Murphy spoke to the Problem Solvers in 2020. “From what it says in my hospital records, I was hit in the head with a rubber bullet or, it says, ‘rubber bullet vs rock.’ I can’t imagine that there was anybody close enough to me that I wouldn’t have noticed they hit me with a rock in the head.”
Orlin said his physical pain was intense.
“There was a whole lot of mental confusion. Just having no idea where I was, what happened to me,” he said. His face had become swollen due to several fractures along the base of his eye.
Murphy told the Problem Solvers in 2020 that he wore a cheap pair of goggles to protect his eyes.
“I got hit in the eye, and the goggles shattered, exploded, but I really think it saved my eye,” he said.
Murphy said the horror that followed included his thought that he might have lost his eye.
“I told friends after, it was the first time in my life where I felt what people mean when they say their life flashed before their eyes. It wasn’t in the sense that I remembered everything past, it was that in an instant, I saw my entire life without my eye and what it would be like. All that just flashed through my head just in a second, and I thought I lost my eye. I couldn’t see. I think I was in a state of shock somewhat. I was just kind of stumbling around,” he said.