BART to Pay $6.75 Million to Woman Shot by Officer in Union City Parking Lot

In a rare pre-litigation settlement announced Friday, BART agreed to pay $6.75 million to a Union City woman shot by one of the agency’s police officers last year and admitted that its initial public allegation that she had assaulted an officer was untrue.

Jasmine Gao, now 33, was sitting in her car outside the Union City station on Nov. 18 when she was met by a pair of BART police officers who had received reports of vehicles doing donuts in the parking lot.

Officer Nicholas Poblete, a six-year veteran of the BART police force, shot Gao when she tried to drive away after a brief struggle over her ID and car keys and a threat from Poblete to pepper-spray her.

In a news release posted the morning after the shooting, BART Police Chief Kevin Franklin said Gao “is alleged to have assaulted a police officer which led to one of the officers discharging their firearm.” The statement added that she would face several charges, including assault with a deadly weapon on police.

But on Friday, the transit agency said body-camera video of the incident shows no assault took place. A statement put out jointly by Gao’s attorneys and BART calls Franklin’s initial account of the shooting “inaccurate” and said it was “based on the available information from the investigation at that time.”

“BART acknowledges that when Ms. Gao drove away, no officer was being dragged or had any body part stuck in the window of her car when Poblete fired, and that no officer was otherwise endangered by Ms. Gao’s driving of the vehicle,” the joint statement said.

“It’s to BART’s credit that they recognized that the shooting should have never happened,” and settled the case without formal litigation, Ben Nisenbaum, the civil rights attorney representing Gao and her family, said in an interview.

Gao is still recovering from injuries suffered in the shooting. One of the bullets Pobelte fired narrowly missed her heart. A second caused her to lose full use of her left arm.

BART said it has issued a notice of intent to fire Poblete, who is on paid leave as the termination process plays out.

During the encounter with Gao, Poblete and a fellow officer quickly established that she had not been involved in the reported driving incident. But before allowing her to go, Poblete told Gao her car’s registration had expired and asked to see her identification and proof of insurance.

Over the course of the next several minutes, body-cam video that BART released in December 2024 shows both Gao and Poblete growing increasingly agitated, with Poblete demanding Gao turn over her car keys and threatening to pepper-spray her. Gao refused to comply, telling Poblete repeatedly he was scaring her. When she rolled up the driver’s side window and began driving away, Poblete fired three shots.

Nisenbaum said that under state law, officers had no legal justification to stop Gao because of the registration issue. He called Poblete’s actions during the stop “a textbook example of what not to do” in an encounter with the public.

“So when [Gao] exhibits signs of fearfulness, the first reaction is to threaten to pepper-spray her?” he said. “You can imagine that that only put her in more of a fearful mode. So she did begin to drive away slowly, but no officer was in the way. No officer was threatened. How this turns into a shooting makes no sense whatsoever.”