Lawsuit seeks $20M claiming teen should not have been charged, incarcerated in park stabbing

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A lawsuit seeks $20M for a teen's alleged wrongful prosecution, conviction and incarceration after the conviction was overturned and the case dismissed.
• A 14-year-old was charged with murder after his attorneys claim he was the victim of an armed robbery in August 2023.
• Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill said the lawsuit seems politically motivated, and the attorney who filed it previously ran against him.

SALT LAKE CITY — A lawsuit filed on Tuesday in federal court asked for over $20 million for a woman and her son, claiming he was "maliciously prosecuted" and "improperly incarcerated," spending over 18 months in custody when his conviction was later overturned and his case dismissed.

The legal filing says the boy, then a 14-year-old high school freshman, was "the victim of an armed robbery" on Aug. 17, 2023, at Scottsdale Park, and defended himself with a knife, ultimately causing the death of Niusami Auela, 24.

It claims the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office knew the boy "had been robbed at gunpoint by a 24-year-old adult and was defending himself and his friends," but continued to prosecute him.

"(The boy) lost a year and a half of his life with family, friends and classmates. His mother lost that time with her son, and his siblings lost that time with their brother," the lawsuit said.

Case history

In the days following Auela's death, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office declined to file charges, finding the teen was acting in self-defense. The charges were later re-screened, and he was charged in February 2024 with murder, a first-degree felony, in juvenile court, along with obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony, and possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor, a class B misdemeanor.

He later pleaded guilty to manslaughter, under a plea deal that reduced his charge, and was sentenced to secure care in September 2024, with a recommendation that he stay there until he is 25. Three months later, his new attorney, Nathan Evershed, filed a motion to set aside the conviction, citing the relationship between the prosecutor and the police officer.

Prosecutors did agree to setting it aside, but instead cited a "discovery violation."

The boy ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter under a plea deal, but later an attorney took up his case, who asked to have the district attorneys removed from the case and then for the conviction to be overturned — both requests were granted by the 3rd District Juvenile Court, and the charges were later dismissed.

After the conviction was overturned, the prosecutors' office was disqualified from seeking another conviction on May 21, 2025. The juvenile court found there was reason to question their "objectivity and neutrality," as well as a "recurring lack of transparency."

Once the Utah Attorney General's office was appointed, it responded to Evershed's motion to dismiss by also requesting dismissal, and the court granted the motion.

Federal lawsuit

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the District of Utah alleged that the charging documents mischaracterized what happened and omitted "numerous critical facts."

It alleges the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office and the West Valley City Police Department withheld evidence and failed to disclose conflicts.

The lawsuit was filed against Salt Lake County, West Valley City, Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill, and Salt Lake County deputy county attorneys Adrianna Davis, Joshua Graves, and Anna Rossi Anderson, as well as West Valley City police officers Josue Llil and Jeff Nelson.

According to filings in the juvenile's criminal case, Davis, the prosecutor assigned to the case, was in an "inappropriate romantic relationship" with Llil, a detective involved with the case. That prosecutor sent messages to a co-worker about the relationship, and that co-worker later disclosed the relationship to Gill after learning of "the unfounded murder charge."

Gill defended the prosecutor, the lawsuit claims, but did assign a different prosecutor to the case.

The lawsuit said on Dec. 9, 2024, Graves, the prosecutor then assigned to the case, wrote "I agree that it should not have been filed as murder," saying manslaughter would have been more appropriate, but the office continued to fight against the case's dismissal after that point.

Tuesday's lawsuit alleges a video shows Auela was holding a gun during the fight, which he later dropped, and his autopsy shows he had taken methamphetamine.

"Despite this evidence of wrongdoing, Mr. Gill has never acknowledged … that there was no probable cause — and the SLCDA continued to prosecute E.E. until the Juvenile Court disqualified the SLCDA for its misconduct," the lawsuit says.

District attorney's response

Gill said his office is aware of the complaint but chose not to comment on the allegations, as the matter is pending litigation.

"We intend to vigorously defend the work of this office and its prosecutors in the proper context of the courtroom," he said.

The county attorney did say the timing of the lawsuit makes it seem political.

He said Evershed ran against him for Salt Lake County District Attorney as a Republican in 2018 and sent a letter this year supporting his Democratic opponent in the primaries, Shawn Robinson.

"The republicans know they can't beat me in the general, so they are supporting the weaker candidate," Gill said. "And this litigation in this political context seems like a political stunt to me."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Emily Ashcraft

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Emily Ashcraft is a reporter for KSL. She covers issues in state courts, health and religion. In her spare time, Emily enjoys crafting, cycling and raising chickens.