Family of Tri-Cities educator slain by ex-cop asks for $150M. ‘Failure upon failure’

Two police agencies and two school districts are to blame for not preventing the shooting death of a West Richland educator and mother, according to a newly filed claim.

Officials with the Richland and Yakima school districts and the West Richland and Yakima police departments failed Amber Rodriguez and her two children at nearly every step, say attorneys for her family.

“What happened to her should never have happened,” attorney Bill Pickett told the Tri-City Herald. “There was failure upon failure. You had one entity’s failure compounding another entity’s failure.”

Her family is asking for $150 million in damages to be divided among her estate and each of her kids.

She was gunned down outside the school where she worked by her ex-husband Elias Huizar, 39, a former Yakima police officer and ex-Richland School District employee.

Police later discovered he’d also killed his young girlfriend Angelica Santos in a house less than a block away. They also had a son together.

Huizar fled the state but ended his own life following a chase and shootout on Interstate 5 in Oregon.

Huizar, who had been accused of rape and child rape months earlier, had a troubled history before the murders. It’s a history that Rodriguez’s attorneys believe none of the agencies took seriously enough.

They claim Yakima police should never have hired Huizar and, later, the agency should have taken concerns about his mental health more seriously. He also should have been removed from serving as a school resource officer after he failed to report allegations of an adult having an inappropriate relationship with a student.

The tort claim alleges that after he eventually resigned and was living in West Richland, Yakima officials didn’t try to get back department-issued guns and ammunition.

The document says Huizar used a Yakima Police Department-issued handgun and ammunition to kill his ex-wife.

The claim also alleges Richland School District officials didn’t do enough of a background check before hiring Huizar, and that the West Richland Police Department failed to seize all of his weapons after they arrested him for rape in February 2024.

Richland school officials declined to comment on the claim. Yakima School District officials told the Herald they’d received the claim and it’s been forwarded to the district’s insurer to review.

The remaining agencies could not be reached Friday about the allegations.

The agencies and insurance carriers have 60 days to decide to pay the tort claim or the family can file a formal lawsuit in Superior Court.

Here’s what the tort claim alleges on how the agencies failed to protect Rodriguez:

Yakima Police Department

Yakima Police Department had the first opportunity to stop Huizar, by never hiring him in the first place, the claim said.

When Huizar was still in college, he had a brush with the law at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. He was charged with threatening people with a knife during a 2008 fight and then with a break-in, though the charges were later dropped by prosecutors.

Rodriguez’s attorneys claim those accusations should have stopped Yakima police from hiring him five years later. They allege the department didn’t investigate Huizar’s background or perform a mental health assessment.

“During his employment with YPD Huizar received letters of reprimand for violations of department policies and on at least two occasions, he lodged complaints of discrimination, harassment and hostile work environment against fellow officers and his chain of command,” the claim said. “City Human Resources and YPD personnel determined his claims were without merit.”

In 2019, Huizar was investigated when he was a school resource officer at a Yakima middle school after Angelica Santos, then 12, told friends she was “dating” Huizar while she was a student there. He was married to Rodriguez at the time.

When similiar allegations arose a second time at the school, a Washington State Attorney General’s investigator was called in but couldn’t prove Santos’ claims.

The police department considered disciplining him anyway because he had never reported the rumors involving Santos when they first came up a couple months earlier.

However, Matt Murray, the Yakima chief at the time, didn’t follow the rules in the union contract so the reprimand never became part of Huizar’s official file, according to the claim.

“Afterwards, Huizar was allowed to continue working with minor, school-aged children as a (school resource officer,) and no further inquiries were made into the allegations,” the claim says.

He continued to work as a school resource office in Yakima in 2020 but took an unapproved medical leave in December 2020. That happened about the same time that Huizar’s wife filed for divorce. They’d been married about six years and had two sons.

Huizar said his post traumatic stress disorder as the reason for his leave, and in February 2021 he turned in paperwork to the city to show he was suffering from PTSD, depression, insomnia and alcohol use disorder.

“Eventually, YPD ordered Huizar to undergo an independent medical exam on March 29, 2021. Huizar failed to appear for that appointment,” according to the claim.

That day, Huizar had gotten into a confrontation with Rodriguez and her father outside William Wiley Elementary in West Richland, and police were called.

Huizar told West Richland officers that Rodriguez was abusing their sons. As a result, the West Richland officers talked to Yakima officials, who didn’t even know Huizar had moved to West Richland though he was still technically an employee on medical leave.

Yakima police asked Union Gap police to look into Huizar’s past relationship with Rodriguez when she was a high school student in Yakima and Huizar was an 24-year-old wrestling mentor.

She was 17 at the time. They later married when she was 22.

The Union Gap police reported at the time that Rodriguez didn’t want to cooperate with the investigation.

Still, the family’s claim says she told Union Gap investigators that “he was not of sound mind, short tempered, controlling and ‘heard voices.’”

“Despite being informed of Huizar’s mental instability, YPD did not take Amber’s concerns seriously, and they failed to conduct any further inquiry into the status of Huizar’s mental instability,” the claim said.

Within a couple weeks of the Union Gap report, in January 2022, Yakima police found his conduct was “unbecoming an officer,” but he was only reprimanded, not fired, says the claim.

The claim says Huizar resigned in February 2022, but Yakima police didn’t force him to return department-issued weapons, ammunition and tactical gear.

West Richland Police

The attorneys allege that West Richland police also should have seized those Yakima Police Department items after Huizar was arrested in February for rape.

“(West Richland Police Department) knew Huizar was a former YPD officer, as they found YPD-issued items during their search,” the claim says.

“Neither YPD nor WRPD made any attempts to communicate regarding Huizar after his resignation, and the failure of WRPD to follow up with YPD about the police equipment/gear ... directly contributed to Huizar’s use of YPD-issued weapons and ammunition to kill Amber Rodriguez.”

A West Richland police report previously obtained by the Herald showed a handgun and rifle were seized from Huizar’s home in February 2024.

A different handgun, but the same model, was found with his body after the chase in Oregon.

Yakima and Richland school districts

Huizar went to work as a substitute teacher at Richland School District shortly after leaving the Yakima Police Department.

He got the position largely based on the strength of recommendations from administrators at Franklin Middle School in the Yakima School District, according to the recent claim.

Richland school officials have previously said they were not aware of any of Huizar’s alleged misconduct as a school resource officer. All background checks came back clear, they said.

After Huizar was charged with raping one of Santos’ friends in February 2024, Richland school officials removed him from the list of approved substitutes and ordered him not to return.

But the new claim says the Richland district didn’t take enough steps to prevent Huizar from returning to William Wiley Elementary, where one of sons went to school and where his ex-wife worked.

The claim alleges school officials should have monitored the school’s security cameras, according to the claim.

“As Huizar waited for Amber to appear, school district leadership, employees and staff either failed to notice his presence on school property, or failed to respond to it, until he shot Amber to death in front of her 9-year-old son using a YPD-issued firearm and YPD-issued ammunition.”