Council approves $30 million settlement in fatal police shooting of Konoa Wilson, 16

Members of the San Diego City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to pay $30 million to the family of a 16-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a police officer.

Wilson’s parents sued the city and San Diego Police Department Officer Daniel Gold following Konoa Wilson’s death the night of Jan. 28.

The boy was fleeing from the downtown Santa Fe Depot after another person fired gunshots at him on a transit platform when he encountered Gold, who was running toward the station. They crossed paths and the officer shot the boy twice in the back “instantly, without any warning,” according to the family’s lawsuit.

Doctors pronounced Konoa dead at a hospital less than an hour later.

His family’s attorneys believe the settlement may be the largest amount paid in a case stemming from a police killing in U.S. history. It surpasses the $27 million paid by Minneapolis to the family of George Floyd.

In a city document, the settlement is described as “not an admission of liability by any party.”

The agreement, disclosed in a City Council agenda posted Friday, was slotted onto the consent agenda, typically the destination for routine matters that are unlikely to spark discussion. Yet two councilmembers, Henry Foster III and Sean Elo-Rivera, spoke out regarding Konoa’s shooting.

Foster brought up Floyd’s death.

“Where’s the progress? Where’s the protect and serve? Better yet, where’s the accountability?” he said. “As the father of a young Black man, this hurts. This could be my son. If only you could understand the fear I feel when my son leaves the house.”

He called on Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego police Chief Scott Wahl to do better.

“Will you step up? Or will we see what we always see … business as usual?” Foster said. “I do ask the public to keep asking questions.”

Elo-Rivera demanded to know what would be done to prevent such shootings in the future, noting that the amount paid out of a public liability fund could and should go to other uses, not to preventable actions like the killing of Wilson.

“I’m expressing my most sincere and deepest apologies for what is the deepest nightmare for any parent,” Elo-Rivera said at Tuesday’s meeting. “There’s no amount of money that can ever replace a child.”

The boy was killed three months shy of his 17th birthday. In a statement, attorneys said he was “an only child, and his parents lost their only son.

“What happened to Konoa was a catastrophic failure of policing,” the Wilson family’s attorney, Nick Rowley, said in a statement. “A 16-year-old boy was running for his life. He was not a threat and not a suspect, yet he was shot in the back by a police officer who only saw him for one second before deciding to pull the trigger.”

In surveillance footage released by the police department earlier this year, Konoa can be seen running after a person pulls out a gun and opens fire on him on depot’s west platform.

Gold and another officer were in the area responding to an unrelated report of an assault when the gunshots rang out.

The boy can be seen running down a corridor leading out of the station and emerging on Kettner Boulevard just as Gold comes upon the corridor.

Body-worn camera footage shows the officer immediately firing on the teen at close range. Rowley said Gold shot the boy “before he even announced who he was.”

After he was shot, the boy is seen on the video screaming and staggering before collapsing. Officers began performing CPR and, while doing so, found a handgun concealed under the youth’s clothing near his right thigh, according to police.

There were no indications in the video that the teen drew his his gun during the incident on the platform or was holding it when Gold, a two-year member of the police department, opened fire.

Rowley said the boy had the gun for self-defense, because he had recently been targeted and assaulted by gang members. The attorney said the gun was not believed to be loaded, but more importantly, was not being brandished when he was shot.

“This settlement brings some semblance of accountability, but not closure,” Rowley’s statement continued. “You don’t get closure when your child is shot in the back for doing nothing wrong by the people who are supposed to be protecting him.

“We hope that Konoa’s story will send a message across the country: Cities will pay dearly when officers violate the law and take a life without justification. We expect the city of San Diego to ensure this never happens again.”

Police said the person who originally fired gunshots at Konoa – described only as a 16-year-old juvenile – was arrested just over a week after the teen’s death.

Ashley Nicholes, a spokeswoman from Wahl’s office, said that the department was not able to comment on ongoing legal matters, but that Gold continues to work with SDPD in an administrative capacity.

All shootings involving police undergo several levels of investigation, which are ongoing in Gold’s case, including a probe by the Internal Affairs Unit into the actions of the officer, according to Nicholes.

Updated 5:35 p.m. Dec. 9, 2025