COMPTON – The father of a good Samaritan who died after being stabbed while trying to break up a fight at the Nickerson Gardens public housing development in 2023 is suing Los Angeles City and County, alleging police and sheriff’s deputies prevented his son’s girlfriend and a woman with nursing training from rendering aid.
David May, the father of the late Jesse Ryan May, brought the lawsuit in Compton Superior Court, alleging wrongful death, civil rights violations and negligence. He seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damges.
Nickerson Gardens is located within the Los Angeles city limits. A representative for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Thursday.
According to the suit, Jesse May was staying with his girlfriend at a Nickerson apartment on April 19, 2023, when at about 1 a.m. he heard sounds from an altercation in the parking lot. He went outside and saw a fight between two women and a man and when he tried to intervene to stop the combatants, he was stabbed in the left leg, the suit states.
Sheriff’s deputies and LAPD officers responded and although Jesse May was bleeding extensively from his leg, both a female acquaintance with a nursing background and later Jesse May’s girlfriend were prevented by officers and deputies from giving him aid, according to the suit, which additionally alleges that the law enforcement personnel also did not render him assistance.
Jesse May was in full cardiac arrest upon his arrival at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and died less than an hour after the stabbing, according to the suit.
The conduct of the LAPD officers and the deputies fell below the standards of those in their profession and David May has suffered severe emotional distress and has had to pay for funeral and burial expenses for his son, the suit states.
