Former Olathe officer facing wrongful death lawsuit hired by police department in Washington
A former Olathe police officer still facing a wrongful death lawsuit after fatally shooting a resident in 2022 has been hired by a police department in Washington state.
Conner Thompson, 28, shot 27-year-old Brandon Lynch inside his mother’s house in Olathe on Dec. 31, 2022.
Shortly after the shooting, the Olathe Police Department said that Lynch had approached Thompson with a serrated weapon, and that Lynch had attempted to discharge a Taser on Lynch before shooting him. In body camera footage from the scene, Thompson can be heard asking Lynch to drop his weapon before firing three rounds.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe ruled in May 2023 that the homicide was justified. Lynch’s mother Maria Varnas filed a lawsuit against Thompson and the Olathe Police Department on May 3, 2024, alleging that Thompson had used excessive force against her son and escalated an interaction with him while he was in crisis.
In October 2024, a U.S. district judge denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis of qualified immunity, which would protect Thompson from being named as a defendant due to his status as a police officer. The judge found that Thompson had violated Lynch’s fourth amendment rights by “recklessly or deliberately” introducing deadly force, leaving him liable to civil action despite Howe’s earlier ruling.
Thompson started at the police department in Kent, Washington, outside of Seattle, as a probationary lateral police officer on Sept. 3, 2024, according to documents from the Kent City Clerk’s Office. The probationary period for new police officers generally lasts from six months to a year.
Thompson moved from Olathe to the Seattle area in summer 2024, having resigned from the Olathe Police Department after five years as an officer. His hiring process in Kent was completed by early July, according to the Kent City Clerk’s Office.
The Kent Police Department was unavailable Monday to comment on Thompson’s hiring process. Kent police chief Rafael Padilla told The Kent Reporter last week that Thompson had disclosed the pending lawsuit during the background check portion of his hiring process.
Brandon Lynch suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and interacted regularly with the Olathe police, who were often called to his family home on East Oakview Street, Lynch’s mother Varnas previously told The Star. On the night of his death, Varnas and daughter Kelelah Link had called the police during one of Lynch’s episodes, on the advice of of Lynch’s caseworker at Johnson County Mental Health.
Varnas said at the time that police had previously been able to soothe Lynch during outbursts and direct him toward resources rather than responding with violence.
Previous reporting by The Star’s Nathan Pilling and Eric Adler contributed to this reporting.
