Families of 2 teens shot, 1 fatally, by Douglass Park lifeguard announce civil lawsuit against Park District, lifeguard

CHICAGO (WGN) — The families of the two teenage boys shot by a Douglass Park lifeguard in late June have filed a civil lawsuit against the Chicago Park District and the lifeguard, Charles Leto, charged in the shooting.

One of the boys, 15-year-old Marjay Dotson, was killed. The other, Jeremy Herred, was critically injured and is now a quadriplegic, according to the wrongful death lawsuit.

Attorneys for the teen’s families say the Park District knew or should’ve known that Leto was unfit to work as a lifeguard. The families of the teens and their attorneys addressed the media Wednesday morning to announce the lawsuit.

“What should’ve been a great day in the summer, fun at the pool, turned into a nightmare when a Chicago Park District employee pulled out a loaded handgun and started shooting indiscriminately in the park,” Jeffrey J. Neslund, attorney for the families, said.

WGN-TV has reached out to the Chicago Park District for a response to the lawsuit and is waiting to hear back.

Shooting captured on camera

On June 26, surveillance cameras at Douglass Park, located on Chicago’s Southwest Side, captured two teens later identified as Dotson and Herred approaching the 55-year-old Leto as he worked on his bike.

Moments later, Leto could be seen pulling out a gun and firing, hitting and killing Dotson and critically injuring Herred, a 14-year-old sophomore at UIC College Prep.

Jeremy Herred Sr. said Wednesday that his son faces a long road to recovery.

“Today is day 69 (of his recovery), and me and my wife haven’t done nothing but be by our son’s side at the hospital, at his bedside,” Herred Sr. said. “We haven’t been to work. We don’t go nowhere.”

Prior to the shooting, the lawsuit says, other kids who had been denied entry at the Douglass Park pool had taken Leto’s bike as a prank and rode it from one side of the pool to the other. Court documents say Leto never called police or security for help.

The lawsuit also says the teens were unarmed and never threatened Leto, who’s been charged with murder, first-degree murder and other crimes. Leto, who says he fired in self-defense, is currently being detained until trial.

Leto resigned from the Park District in lieu of being terminated, and a spokesperson with the district told WGN News earlier this summer that Leto is ineligible for future employment with the district.

Previous incidents

According to an internal review by the Park District, released in July, Leto had been given several warnings about his behavior toward guests.

“A patron at another pool specifically complained about the shooter, saying he did not feel safe because of (Leto’s) aggressive behavior,” Neslund said Wednesday.

But those warnings never made it up the ranks of the Park District, which prompted the district this summer to take a hard look at its employee policies.

“Those verbal warnings were never tracked in our central human resource disciplinary file. So that never made its way to headquarters,” Park District Superintendent Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said previously. “There was no way to be able to track those verbal warnings across different park locations, so we now want to make sure that we’re tracking those types of incidents so that we can then take appropriate action.”

WGN-TV also reported this summer that Leto shot two dogs and killed one in Lakeview in 2023 because he said he felt threatened by the animals. However, that didn’t show up on a background check, because Leto wasn’t criminally charged in the incident, even though he got into a standoff with police after the shooting.