On May 15, 1970, a Seattle police officer shot and killed Larry Eugene Ward (1947-1970), a Black man, as he fled from police after attempting to light a bomb fuse at Hardcastle Realty at 23rd Avenue and Union Street in the Central Area. Police were alerted to the attempt by the FBI, who had been watching the property, expecting Black Panther involvement in the bombing. Ward was a Vietnam veteran, wounded in combat, and had been out of the U.S. Army for two months; he had been recruited for this job by a police informant only shortly before. A coroner's inquest, characterized by protests and disruptions, heard evidence on the shooting and handed down a non-unanimous verdict of "death by criminal means." However, this verdict was later overturned because it was not unanimous and prosecutors declined to file criminal charges. Civil suits against the officers who killed Ward went to trial in 1975. These suits were dismissed or produced verdicts in favor of the police officers.
Here, Ward family attorney Lem Howell speaks to an unidentified man in the court room during the coroner's inquest at King County Superior Court.
Lembhard G. “Lem” Howell (b. 1936) worked as an attorney in Seattle for over three decades. Howell was counsel or plaintiff in many of Washington state’s major civil rights cases, including the 1969 lawsuit that ended the exclusion of Black workers from trade unions. He was also involved in community and political activities, serving as President of Central Seattle Community Councils Federation, and helping found Trial lawyers for Public Justice, and the Loren Miller Bar Association, Washington State’s African American bar. Howell was the first Black member of the Board of Governors for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the Washington State Bar Association, and the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association.
Caption information source: "Police shoot and kill Larry Ward while he sets a bomb in Seattle's Central area" by David Wilma, HistoryLink.org Essay 2435. Caption information source: "Lembhard G. Howell" at Loren Miller Bar Association website, retrieved at https://www.lmba.net/Board/Lemhard-G.-Howell
