Connecticut Town Settles Lawsuit over Suspect’s Death

December 8, 2008

  • December 8, 2008 at 7:29 am
    coffee drinker says:
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    I’m with Blossum and F. Lee. A “fist fight” mind you. It was not a bank robbery or an assualt on an old lady, or murder. The cops knew this and sic’d the dog on the kid. The dog bit him! The most rational thing that humans might just do is run from the dog. It is not unrational nor unreasonable act. A jury comprised of flatheads, roundheads, and squareheads, and other human beings, might ask themselves…suppose it was their kid confronted with the same situation. Kids fight. Kids panic. Once cornered…people of all ages do all sorts of rational and irrational things. Self-preservation, maybe? We pay cops for protection and expect them to use their authority in a professional manner. We can only look at what happen and then try to put the pieces together…just like a jury of “non-peers” would do. I think a jury verdict in excess of $1m would be on the low end. The town could “not stare a gift horse in the mouth” here. Rational minds prevailed. Here the “act” of the kid’s death, “does not fit the crime” of a fist fight and subsequent dog bites. The professionals should have exercised better judgment.

  • December 8, 2008 at 8:55 am
    Quack says:
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    Only in Connecticut!

  • December 8, 2008 at 12:06 pm
    wudchuck says:
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    we obviously know the family lost a loved one. we know that during times like these, that emotions can frustrate us with good decisions.

    look at the whole issue:

    1) why was this young 18 yr old running away from the police? afterall, they are upholding the law. they probably told the young man to stop more than once.

    2) hiding in a bush? well, i think sending a dog into the bush was correct move. how many times does someone need to get the signal to get from hiding?

    3) running onto the highway?! by now this kid is frantic but not thinking straight. but in reality, it was his fault for running onto the highway. you can’t fault the truck driver for someone acting irrationally.

    but after all this, why did we settle? are we afraid to stand for truth and justice? are we afraid to say that there is a possiblity that our kids can get into trouble?

    there should have been no settlement.

  • December 8, 2008 at 12:33 pm
    Dawn says:
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    Didn’t you get the memo? It’s not their fault. How dare a cop actually try to stop someone who is breaking the law. If they so much as fall down and scrape their knee, the city will pay.

    ITA. No settlement. Kid runs from cops, kid gets killed. Sad, but KID’S fault.

    Makes me wonder why cops bother.

  • December 8, 2008 at 2:41 am
    Blossum says:
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    Perchance the reason for settlement is if the case saw the light of a courtroom, the jury award most probably would have been considerably higher. Given this, the city got off easy with the $300k+ settlement.

  • December 8, 2008 at 2:57 am
    Wes says:
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    Another example that the jury system is broken, when defendants can be coerced into ridiculous settlements for fear of what a runaway jury might do…

    W

  • December 8, 2008 at 3:52 am
    F Lee says:
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    If they already caught you, and they cops are sitting around laughing eating donuts while the dog unnesesarily bites you 24 times, I think its time to run. Its actually very rational. There is such a thing as police brutality. Cops have literally killed people while putting them into custody.

    The cops are idiots anyway to not call the dogs off and put the guy into proper custody.

  • December 8, 2008 at 6:02 am
    lastbat says:
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    F Lee, I don’t think we can say the cops stood around eating donuts while the dog bit this kid. Dogs can bite very fast. I’d also rather have them send a dog into the bushes than a person. The dog has a better chance.

    I’m with you wudchuck.

  • December 9, 2008 at 7:39 am
    wudchuck says:
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    well, let me put it this way. at the age of 18, you are to be considered an adult and treated as one. you are supposed to know the difference between right and wrong. it’s not a matter of the age of the individual. if you look, some kids under the age of 18 are tried as an adult. it does not matter if it is my kid or someone else’s, wrong is wrong. that might be the card that the lawyer will play, but in reality — he was running from the law! how many times do we have to stop and say, i did it – i am responsible for my actions. with actions comes reactions, laws of newton. it’s like that other article about the kid wearing clogs who got his toe injured while riding the escalator. do we need a label here? if you run into the bush, you might find an animal coming? if you run onto the highway, you might get hit from a vehicle? that trucker, could he not sue the family for suffering? um…um… where will it end?

  • December 9, 2008 at 7:43 am
    Dawn says:
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    Family sues cops, driver sues family. The innocent one here could actually make out.
    That could work.
    They go public, make out their criminal son to be the ‘victim’ then the TRUE victim steps up and takes their ‘spoils’. I like that.
    I don’t believe for one second that the cops didn’t tell the kid to stop before sending in the dogs. Wonder if he had other reasons for running. (priors, warrants?) Since he was 18, anything before his birthday will never be made public knowledge, so we don’t know if he’d been in trouble before.
    Here’s to the truck driver getting the whole settlement for HIS pain and suffering.

  • December 9, 2008 at 9:16 am
    DD72 says:
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    Mind you 24 marks can equal one, maybe two actual bites. Dogs have a lot of teeth! The police did nothing wrong.

  • December 9, 2008 at 9:21 am
    Blossum says:
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    We don’t know for certain whether the PD was negligent or not. We may never know. It seems logical that they did SOMETHING untoward b/c of the settlement & resistance in allowing the case to be heard by a jury. Chances are, the kid was evading the PD & the PD was negligent in some way.

  • December 9, 2008 at 9:31 am
    wudchuck says:
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    if a human has approx 32 teeth, then that would 32 puncture marks if you had bitten me. so i can imagine, that a dog bite (only 1) would be enough to cause 24 marks. i think this family is just emotionally challenged and not looking at things in perspective, which is understandable. in reality, the lawyer is probably to blame for this continuation! i think the lawyer should be paying the family for reliving this situation and then the family may have to give some money to the truck driver. it may have to come out of the homeowner’s policy for the damage to the truck and then emotional distress for killing the young adult. folks really don’t look at the whole picture.

  • December 9, 2008 at 4:21 am
    Anonymous says:
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    Thank you. Someone with some common sense.

  • December 9, 2008 at 4:32 am
    Anonymous says:
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    Ok, the dog may have 24 plus teeth in his mouth but I highly doubt that they all landed on him at the same time. When if ever have you bitten something and saw the imprint of all of your teeth? The 24 marks were not from one bite by far. Yes he should’ve stopped but when will the cops learn they are not above the law and can’t do what they feel just because someone has commited a crime. Way too many cops have done illegal things to people in custody or people they are trying to take into custody and no one puts them away. The cops are getting power crazy and if we don’t put a top on it now it won’t be just a kid running from a fight, it will be your daughter out past curfew, or you son walking with the wrong clothes on to make him look like a thug. I beleive the cops could’ve went into the bushes and restrained one boy without the use of a dog.

  • December 9, 2008 at 6:18 am
    KEEPITREAL says:
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    wudchuck for President! All this- TRAGIC INDEED! Anyones “fault” other than this kid – ABSOLUTLY NOT !! C’MON w/ the dawn of TV Shows like COPS , all media we see etc…is there anybody who doesn’t know :YOU LISTEN & COMPLY WITH THE DIRECTION OF THE POLICE. “UNWILLINNESS” TO DO SO WILL WORSEN YOUR SITUATION…

  • December 10, 2008 at 8:19 am
    Dawn says:
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    I don’t know where your are, but it seems to be open season on cops down here.
    Cops are shot, stabbed, run over, and killed regularly. How are they supposed to know what that kid had hiding in a bush? Dog wasn’t going to kill him. Shooting into the bush would. And to just jump in where you couldn’t see could possibly be suicide for a cop.

    We just had 4 guys blow (Literally) through 4 Dunkin’ Donuts with AK-47s shooting at customers. Hello? Cops hang out at Dunkin’ Donuts- that’s reportedly why they targeted it. That’s what we live with every day. They don’t care who is in their way- kids, elderly, cops.



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