Kyle McClenagan/HPM
Patricia Underwood (left), attorney U.A. Lewis (middle) and Sean Underwood (right) speak at a news conference May 12, 2026, about a wrongful death lawsuit against the Houston Police Department in the 2025 shooting death of Tony Underwood.
The mother of a man who was shot and killed last year by a Houston Police Department (HPD) officer is suing the department and other local government agencies for the alleged wrongful death of her son and for allegedly preventing her from visiting him in the hospital in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
The lawsuit was filed in Harris County earlier this month against HPD, the officer who was involved in the shooting, the city of Houston, the Harris County Attorney’s Office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. They are accused of initially preventing Tony Underwood’s mother, Patricia Underwood, from visiting her son. The lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages and also alleges that Tony Underwood was unarmed when he was shot by police.
Several months after his death in July 2025, his family also is still trying to obtain a copy of his autopsy report. The case file on the website for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences shows Underwood died from complications of a gunshot wound involving the chest and neck, and his manner of death is listed as homicide.
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Accusations of wrongful death
On April 30, 2025, an HPD officer shot Tony Underwood, 37, in the 7800 block of Tierwester Street in south Houston. Underwood was shot following a police pursuit that started as a vehicle chase and ended on foot. Following the shooting, he was in the hospital for 79 days before he died. During that time he was charged with aggravated assault of a public servant.
According to court documents, police claim that officers chased Underwood after the car he was driving was listed as having been stolen. According to police, he allegedly reached for a gun in his waistband during a struggle with police and was shot by an officer who was standing over him.
Underwood had previously been convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records.
The attorneys representing his family dispute police’s telling of the 2025 shooting and claim Underwood threw the weapon away from himself before lying face down on the ground. The attorneys also claim Underwood was driving his girlfriend’s car at the time and had not stolen it.
“The chase ended when Tony surrendered,” the lawsuit reads. “He got down on the ground and lay on his stomach. His hands were empty. He posed no immediate threat. Yet Officer Palin positioned himself over Tony and fired his weapon, striking him from behind in his back.”
HPD later released the body camera footage from two officers at the scene of the shooting, the one who shot Underwood and another who arrived as the shooting occurred. The video footage is graphic and may be unsuitable for some.
The shooting occurred at night, and Underwood’s gun cannot clearly be seen in either video released by the department.
Speaking at a news conference Tuesday outside the Harris County Courthouse, the family’s attorney, Randall Kallinen, accused HPD of editing the video to favor the officers involved.
“I’m a civil rights lawyer, and I’ve watched a hundred or more shooting videos, and I always hear the shot,” Kallinen said. “Why is it on this particular video where they’re worried about shooting someone in the back, can’t you hear the sound of an extremely loud Glock going off just a short distance from a body camera?”
HPD declined to comment regarding the lawsuit and deferred comment to the city government. The city attorney’s office and a spokesperson for Mayor John Whitmire did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the lawsuit and its allegations.
In 2025, HPD officers were involved in 28 shooting incidents, according to HPD data. That is the same number of incidents as 2024 and nine more than in 2023.
During the last two decades, the highest number of shootings involving Houston police occurred in 2009, when there were 49 shootings resulting in 16 deaths, with one of those fatalities being an officer. In 2015, a total of 32 shooting incidents were recorded and 12 of those people died.
Mother says she was initially denied visitation
According to Kallinen, Underwood was in the hospital for 79 days after the shooting and was “left paralyzed and unable to speak.” Patricia Underwood said it took 34 days to see her son.
The lawsuit claims her rights were violated when she was initially denied access to visit Tony Underwood.
“They took my rights from me for no reason,” she said. “I want to know why did they took my rights from me not to go see my son?”
U.A. Lewis, another attorney representing the family, said Patricia Underwood eventually sued to get a court order to see her son.
“She had to get a court order from a judge after filing several lawsuits in different avenues to get to her son,” Lewis said. “Once that criminal court judge issued the order for her to see her son … she was met with an officer at the hospital telling her that she could not see her son after all.”
Patricia Underwood was ultimately able to visit her son in the hospital. Harris County court documents show that she sued to visit her son in May 2025 and that a judge ordered she should be able to visit him.
“Patricia had a protected liberty interest in familial association with Tony and in the ability to seek access to him through truthful, fair governmental procedures,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants deprived her of that interest without meaningful notice, without a fair opportunity to be heard, without a valid court order, and without a neutral decisionmaker.”
According to the lawsuit, Tony Underwood was in the custody of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office while in the hospital. The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the lawsuit.
Alleged refusal to release autopsy
Kallinen said he and the family have been denied access to Underwood’s autopsy after trying to obtain it through a public information request.
“Now HPD is saying, ‘You can’t get the autopsy report because we’re investigating ourselves,’ ” Kallinen said. “That’s the fox guarding the hen house. That’s a conflict of interest. When HPD shoots and kills somebody, how can they then say, ‘Oh, by the way, we are going to prevent the release of that very autopsy report?’ “
Kallinen also said this is not the first time he has been denied access to an autopsy in this manner.
“This is a part of a pattern and practice,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I requested another autopsy report over two years ago in the death of Edgin Tavera, also shot and killed by HPD. They didn’t give it, saying that there was an investigation. And now, recently, near the two-year anniversary, I requested it again and HPD, once again, is saying, ‘We’re still investigating.'”
In a statement to Houston Public Media on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences said the department does not release information that could interfere with an investigation.
“The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences received an objection from the Houston Police Department and the Harris County District Attorney’s office regarding the release of the record,” the spokesperson said. “The objection was submitted to the State Attorney General’s office for a ruling. The objection was upheld by the Attorney General’s office, to which we are bound.”
The Harris County Attorney’s Office, which represents the institute in legal matters such as public information requests, declined to comment.