Alaya Bouche had warned her son not to go out that Saturday night.
“I said, ‘Tonight is not the night,’ ” Bouche said in a recent telephone interview. “There are going to be some mean, bad cops out there.”
But Bouche’s son, Jonathan Drake Vause, insisted he had bills to pay. So the 26-year-old jumped into his truck in West Seattle and headed downtown to deliver for Postmates, the food delivery service, Bouche said. The problem was he was working on the very same night thousands were protesting the death of George Floyd.
A little after 10 p.m. that Saturday, May 30, as police vehicles burned and windows were shattered, protesters broke into a T-Mobile store on Sixth Avenue. Police say Vause, who is white, was one of many caught stealing in the downtown area.
And like others who were downtown that night for the Seattle protest, he was arrested and held in the King County jail for days. But Vause was the only man featured in a viral video taken that night that showed a police officer pushing his knee into his neck, days after Floyd died from the same maneuver in Minneapolis.
“Several thousand protesters began to loot the downtown businesses as the night wore on,” reads a police report. “Vause was one of several people arrested.”
Crosscut video footage shows Vause — in orange rain jacket and dark jeans — facedown on the pavement in front of the T-Mobile store and surrounded by police. As two officers pin him down, one presses his knee against Vause's neck — the same kind of dangerous and possibly lethal police tactic used to restrain Floyd before he died.
People observing the arrest can be heard screaming, “Get your fucking knee off his neck!” One of the officers then pushes the other officer’s knee off Vause’s neck. Vause yells for help.
The police report names Officer Robert Stevenson as the arresting officer. Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability made clear it is investigating the incident. But Andrew Myerberg, director of the OPA, said Stevenson is not the officer who used force.
Bouche said she didn’t see the video of her son being arrested until the morning after he was arrested.
“I’m looking at it, and I’m like ‘Oh my God, that’s my kid,’ ” Bouche said.
“Thank God for the good cop. Thank God for the crowd, and thank God, it was recorded,” she said.
According to court documents, Vause was booked into King County jail for burglary, but no charges had been filed against him as of Friday afternoon.
Like the dozens of others arrested that night, Vause spent four days in jail. He was not released until the following Tuesday night because of an emergency closure of courthouses. The courtroom inside the King County jail and the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle were among those abruptly shuttered on Monday.
Vause’s lawyer, Kevin Trombold, said his client and others caught up in the mayhem Saturday night were released on personal recognizance, but could face charges later. Tromblod said the police don’t have any proof Vause actually took anything from the store, simply that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.
His mother doesn’t believe Vause clearly remembers the night he was arrested.
“I think he got hit too hard,” Bouche said.
She said he was already struggling with finances, working two jobs, and the arrest had only made his situation more difficult. His car was left downtown and all four windows were smashed. Cash inside the glove compartment was stolen.
Two fingers on his left hand are still numb from the zip ties the police officers used, Bouche said.
“He kind of doesn’t want to talk about it,” she said. “He’s not in a good place.”
“I wish I could just go bring him home,” she added.
Crosscut photographer Matt McKnight contributed reporting.
