The family of Leon Davis, a 27-year-old Federal Way man who died after being restrained on a hospital hallway floor, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on Tuesday, October 27, in King County Superior Court against the City of Federal Way, the Federal Way Police Department and the operators of St. Francis Hospital, the family's law firm, Osborn Machler Neff PLLC, announced.
Source: Business Wire — Osborn Machler Neff PLLC
The lawsuit claims Davis died after police officers and hospital staff pinned him face down and handcuffed him on the hallway floor for at least 25 minutes, even after he said he could not breathe. The King County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide and found that Davis was “restrained in a prone position for a minimum of 25 minutes,” according to the announcement.
Source: Business Wire — Osborn Machler Neff PLLC
He walked into the hospital himself on March 12
According to the suit, Davis admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way on March 12, 2026, seeking help for a medical condition. Hospital staff treated him with medications that, the suit alleges, left him confused, dizzy and paranoid. Two days later, when he tried to leave, hospital security staff tackled, beat and physically held him down, the complaint alleges. These are the family's allegations in a civil filing; the defendants have not yet answered them in court.
Source: Business Wire — Osborn Machler Neff PLLC
When Federal Way police officers arrived, attorney Simeon Osborn said, they held Davis down as well, pinning him face down to the ground for at least 25 minutes. “Leon pleaded with officers to let him up as he desperately tried to breathe under the weight of his body and the bodies of the hospital security personnel and Federal Way police officers holding him against the ground,” Osborn said. “He died on a hospital floor yards away from the Progressive Care Unit, where doctors and nurses are trained to respond to exactly this kind of emergency.”
Source: Business Wire — Osborn Machler Neff PLLC
The spit hood — and the state policy the lawyers cite
The 22-page complaint alleges that when officers arrived, they did not ask about the effect of the medications Davis had received or about his diagnosis, ignored his pleas for help, and placed an ill-fitting spit hood over his face, further compromising his ability to breathe. Body-camera footage shows that Davis's mouth and nose were so bloodied that a puddle had formed on the floor before officers put the hood on him, the complaint says. The Washington attorney general's model use-of-force policy states that hoods should not be used “where the restrained person is bleeding profusely from the area around the mouth or nose,” and Davis's lawyers say the Federal Way policy claims to be consistent with that model policy.
Source: Business Wire — Osborn Machler Neff PLLC
“The defendants violated their medical training, police training, use-of-force training, agency policies, and simple common sense when they pinned an overweight, exhausted, sedated, handcuffed, and bleeding man, face down, to the ground for nearly a half-hour.” — Roger Rogoff, attorney for the Davis family
Why the family released the video itself
The family is releasing the unredacted body-worn camera footage of Davis's death, which it obtained, and shared the complete one-and-a-half hours of footage with news outlets on October 27. The Federal Way Police Department has refused to release the footage, the lawyers said. “There is no plausible reason for the police or prosecutors to deny the public access to these videos for more than seven months,” Osborn said. “Withholding the video doesn't change what happened to Leon. It just breeds distrust.” Davis's sister, Shannice Johnson, said: “No one should have to watch someone they love slowly die while doctors and nurses stand by.”
Source: Business Wire — Osborn Machler Neff PLLC
Independent local reporting on the filing adds that Davis suffered cardiac arrest while officers pinned him to the floor, with a doctor and nurses watching, according to the reported account of his death. Davis, who graduated from Kent Meridian High School and enrolled at Green River College, where he studied music, had never been in trouble with the law, his family's attorneys said.
Source: Focal News (Seattle)
Who is being sued — and what happens next
The suit names the City of Federal Way, the Federal Way Police Department, Police Chief Andrew Hwang, CommonSpirit Health, CommonSpirit Washington, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health — which operates St. Francis Hospital — and Saint Francis Community Hospital as defendants. It brings claims of wrongful death, negligence, battery, unlawful imprisonment and medical malpractice, and seeks damages in an amount to be proven at trial. The case is No. 26-2-35189-9 KNT in King County Superior Court. Tuesday's announcement carried no response from the city, the police department or the hospital operators; the defendants will now answer the complaint in court, and a judge will set the schedule for the case. For readers in Federal Way, Kent and the wider Seattle–Tacoma area — including the region's large Punjabi community, many of whose families use St. Francis and other Franciscan hospitals — the case will test how police and hospital staff are trained to handle a patient in medical distress, and how quickly body-camera video of a death in custody must be made public.