Jan. 24—A Native American man who was wounded last year during a protest against a statue of a Spanish conquistador has filed a lawsuit against the suspect charged with shooting him.

Jacob Johns filed his lawsuit against Ryan Martinez on Tuesday in state District Court. The lawsuit accuses Martinez, 23, of intending to kill Johns, who was shot in the stomach and seriously injured. It also says Martinez, who wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat to the rally and according to witnesses repeatedly antagonized the mostly Native American group of rallygoers before the scuffle that preceded the shooting, “was motivated by hatred, bias and prejudice against Indigenous people that morning.”

Johns, an artist and activist from Spokane, Wash., also is suing Martinez’s parents, Bryan Anthony Martinez and Adelita Martinez, alleging they “were aware that defendant Ryan Martinez was obsessed with guns and firearms, and that he routinely engaged in dangerous and exceptionally disturbing behavior while living with them.”

The lawsuit states that shortly before the shooting a neighbor of the Martinezes, in Sandia Park, told the parents he had seen Ryan Martinez “walking around at night wearing body armor and carrying an AR-15-style assault rifle and carrying a handgun,” and that Bryan Anthony Martinez admitted to the neighbor that his son’s behavior was “odd.”

The lawsuit also claims Martinez’s parents knew their son was investigated by FBI agents in 2018 after posting threats regarding an attack on the U.S. Federal Reserve to the website X, then known as Twitter.

When investigators searched the Martinez home after the shooting, the lawsuit notes, police found an AR-15 rifle modified to fire in fully automatic mode, a 3D printer and 3D-printed gun parts, including “switches,” which allow a semi-automatic rifle to be converted to fully automatic fire.

The Martinezes, the lawsuit alleges, “were aware that Defendant Ryan Martinez, while living in their Sandia Park house, was engaged in disturbing and illegal gun-related activity, and that he posed a threat to the safety and well-being of the public and/or to specific individuals.”

The lawsuit is seeking damages from the defendants for personal injury and mental and emotional distress as well as attorney fees and interest.

“The message is that if you engage in racist, hate-filled violence against Indigenous people, you will pay a steep penalty, in both criminal court and civil court,” Johns’s attorney, John Day, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

Martinez’s attorneys could not be immediately reached on Wednesday to give a response to the lawsuit.

Martinez faces charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless driving after the Sept. 28 incident at the Rio Arriba County complex, where protesters and counterprotesters had clashed over plans to install a statue of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, an important figure in New Mexico history who has been criticized for his treatment of Northern New Mexico’s Indigenous people.

Martinez is in jail pending trial, and prosecutors are seeking firearms and hate crime sentencing enhancements that could add years to a potential prison sentence. His lawyers have said in court that he shot Johns but have claimed self-defense.