SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A U.S. District Judge on Thursday issued a partial dismissal in the wrongful death civil lawsuit filed by the family of Tommie McGlothen Jr. against the City of Shreveport, the City’s insurance agency, as well as Shreveport Police and Fire Personnel.

McGlothen died while in SPD custody on April 5, 2020, and his family is now asking a federal jury to give them an unspecified amount of money for damages.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Foote’s March 31 decision was in response to a Motion to Dismiss filed by attorneys representing the defendants.

On March 16, 2021, McGlothen’s family filed the federal lawsuit against the City of Shreveport, its insurer, American Alternative Insurance Corporation, then Shreveport Police Chief Ben Raymond, and the four former officers, both individually and in their official capacity.

Then, in July 2021, the McGlothen family filed an amended complaint in which they also named Shreveport Fire Chief Scott Wolverton and SFD firefighters Billy Glass, Joshua Yelvington and Clint Richardson individually and in their official capacity.

Glass, Yelvington and Richardson were three of the five SFD personnel who responded to the scene of McGlothen.

In Foote’s decision, she dismissed with prejudice (meaning those charges may never be brought again), the lawsuit’s excessive force claims under the 14th Amendment standard and the official capacity claims against the SPD and SFD officers.

However, she denied the motion “in other respects with the right to reurge upon Plaintiffs filing of an amended complaint.”

Foote gave McGlothen attorneys a deadline of April 29 to file an amended complaint.

A Caddo Parish grand jury on Sept. 14, 2020, handed down an indictment charging former Shreveport Police officers Treona A. McCarter, Brian M. Ross, D’Marea J. Johnson and James LeClare with malfeasance in office and negligent homicide in the April 5, 2020, in-custody death of Tommie McGlothen Jr.

Their criminal trial is scheduled for June 13 in Caddo District Court.