On the evening of November 17, 2017, a 25-year-old Iranian-American man named Bijan Ghaisar was driving his Jeep Grand Cherokee in Fairfax, VA. After being involved in a minor traffic accident on the George Washington Memorial Parkway where he was rear-ended, Ghaisar drove away from the scene. This initiated a pursuit by two U.S. Park Police officers, Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard. The chase continued for several minutes, during which Ghaisar stopped his vehicle on three separate occasions.
Each time he stopped, the officers would exit their vehicle and approach his with their guns drawn. Twice, Ghaisar drove away as the officers neared his car.
The third time Ghaisar stopped, at an intersection in a residential neighborhood, the officers again approached his vehicle. As Ghaisar’s Jeep began to slowly move forward in an apparent attempt to drive around the police cruiser that was positioned to block him, the two officers fired a total of ten shots into his vehicle. Ghaisar, who was unarmed, was struck multiple times, including four times in the head. He was transported to a local hospital where he remained in a coma for ten days before being taken off life support and dying on November 27, 2017.
The two officers involved in the shooting, Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard, were placed on administrative leave following the incident. For over a year, their identities were not publicly released. The shooting was investigated by the FBI, but in November 2019, the Department of Justice announced that no federal criminal civil rights charges would be filed against the officers. The department stated it could not disprove that the officers acted in self-defense.
In October 2020, a special grand jury in Fairfax County indicted both Amaya and Vinyard on state charges of manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm. The officers' legal team successfully argued to have the case moved to federal court. In October 2021, a federal judge dismissed all state charges against the officers, ruling that their actions were 'necessary and proper' and that they were protected from state prosecution by federal law. An appeal of this decision was later dropped by the new Virginia Attorney General in April 2022, effectively ending any further criminal prosecution of the officers. The Ghaisar family filed a civil lawsuit against the federal government, which resulted in a $5 million settlement in April 2023. An investigation by the Department of the Interior, released in November 2024, concluded that the officers did not violate Park Police policy in their use of deadly force. Following years on administrative leave, the officers returned to active duty.
