The man convicted of shooting and killing 19-year-old Lorenzo Anderson on the edge of Seattle’s notorious protest zone in June 2020 was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Friday.
Marcel Long, now 20, was arrested last July in Des Moines, Washington, after being wanted by authorities for more than a year over the killing of Anderson. He entered a deal with prosecutors this May and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder.
Although Anderson’s family wanted to take the case to trial in the hope that it would lead to harsher outcomes on Long’s part, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said they believe the plea deal is the best option to make sure Long is at least held accountable.
“This was a plea deal because there’s never a guarantee of what a jury will do, even in a case like this one,” the office said at that time.
As part of Friday’s sentencing, Long is facing 14 years in prison followed by three years in “community custody,” in addition to a restitution fine, the amount of which will be determined at a later date.
Anderson, a special needs teenager who had graduated from high school the day before, was shot by Long on June 20, 2020, right on the edge of the city’s six-block Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) area, a barricaded, unpoliced “autonomous zone” that emerged amid Black Lives Matter protests and was overrun with anti-police anarcho-communists. Anderson died on the way to the hospital.
Surveillance camera footage the night of the shooting shows the two encounter each other and Long pulling out a handgun on Anderson, who was walking away. Though others tried to restrain Long, who broke free and chased Anderson, shooting him four times.
The self-appointed CHOP medics immediately called 911 and asked first responders to rush to Anderson’s aid. However, Seattle Fire Department ambulance crew stationed just a block and a half away said they would not enter the police-free zone without an all-clear from the Seattle Police Department, which didn’t come until about 20 minutes after Anderson was shot.
When the first responders finally arrived at the scene with a police escort, Anderson had already been taken by frustrated CHOP volunteers to the hospital, where he died shortly after.
Anderson’s father, Horace Anderson, in 2020 filed claims in excess of $3 billion against the city of Seattle and Washington State over his son’s death. In 2022, the city paid him a $500,000 settlement.
A separate lawsuit was brought by Donitta Sinclair, Anderson’s mother. She accused city officials of acting in negligence regarding the violence and lawlessness inside CHOP she said they helped create and should therefore be held responsible for her son’s death.
“The City had a duty to act reasonably and not create a danger,” the complaint read. “By abandoning CHOP and approving a ‘no-cop’ zone where police only entered CHOP in the event of ‘life-threatening’ crimes, and sometimes not even then, the City created a danger.”
“Anderson should have been in the hands of professional medics almost immediately and transported to the hospital in a matter of a few minutes. Every minute matters in treating gunshot wounds,” it added. “The City’s negligence proximately caused Anderson’s death.”
The lawsuit was first dismissed by a federal judge in 2021. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in May upheld the lower court’s ruling, saying that by abandoning CHOP, the city did create “a toxic brew of criminality that would endanger city residents,” but not her son specifically.
“The danger to which the city contributed was not particularized to Sinclair or her son, or differentiated from the generalized dangers posed by crime, as our precedent requires. We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of Sinclair’s suit for failure to state a claim for relief,” Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson, a Trump appointee, wrote for the three-judge panel. He also noted that there is “no constitutional right to recover for the loss of her companionship with her adult son.”
Nelson was joined by Circuit Judges Richard Tallman, a Bill Clinton appointee, and Danielle Forrest, a Trump appointee.
