DAYTON — The family of Aisha Nelson and her 6-year-old daughter, Harper Guynn, who were killed in their Dayton home in June filed a wrongful death suit against several parties including the City of Dayton and the Dayton Police Department.
The complaint filed Monday afternoon states Alisha Nelson called Dayton police multiple times on June 22 to inform the police that her boyfriend, Waverly Dante Hawes had threatened her life.
The lawsuit continues to state that after her first call to Dayton Police Aisha, along with her daughter, went to a separate location to wait for the police out of fear of angering Hawes but police never arrived.
Nelson’s family spoke on the lawsuit Tuesday and said they are not happy with the response of the two officers called to Aisha’s home back in June when she complained about domestic violence threats made by her boyfriend.
“I feel as though it was negligence. It could have been prevented and it wasn’t,” Keeley Nelson, Aisha’s mother, said.
Body camera footage obtained through a public records request shows two officers responding to Aisha’s home in the early morning hours of June 23 to reports of a possible domestic violence situation soon before she and her daughter were found dead.
The video showed Aisha telling the officers Hawes had threatened her with a gun that he had taken from her and threatened her life. They tried to convince him to stay in the basement.
Police said Aisha didn’t want to leave the home and neither did Hawes. Neither of them had signs of physical abuse and the officers were not sure they had the grounds to remove anyone.
One of the officers can be heard saying, “It would be a stretch. We could articulate [it] as domestic threats and take him to jail.”
Officers left without making an arrest or separating anyone. An hour or two later Aisha and her 6-year-old daughter were found dead in the basement, they had been shot.
Later that day Hawes was found dead in Falkville, Alabama, suffering from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Dayton Police told News Center 7 Tuesday the review into the officers’ interaction at the call was still on-going and they cannot comment on pending lawsuit.
“This is unnecessary, it was tragically knowable and foreseeable,” Robert Gresham, the family’s attorney, said.
Gresham said the lawsuit is about the city and police being accountable for not following their own domestic violence police, which they called deficient.
Aisha’s family said they want justice for an incident that changed their life.
“We are not doing Christmas, we can not do Christmas,” Keeley Nelson said. “We can’t celebrate any holidays now.”