University to Pay Parents of Student Who Died After Being Tased

The parents of a University of Cincinnati student who died after being tased by campus police, have been awarded $2 million to be paid to them by the University.

He was 18 in 2011 when he and his program director got into a confrontation with campus police. According to the campus officer, the student was ordered to get down on the ground, but he failed to comply and instead moved towards the officer, he was tased twice – once in the stomach and once in the chest. He immediately fell to the ground and died within moments.

His family sued the officer and the University for the wrongful death of their son. The coroner was unable to establish a cause of death, but he had been in good health before the incident and had been given a clean bill of health. It seemed reasonable therefore to blame the 50,000 volts of electricity that were shot into his body with the taser as what precipitated his death.

The goal of the lawsuit was to protect more people from deaths like this in the future and make campus police more cautious and careful about using force. The settlement agreement will successfully limit the use of tasers by campus police. Tasers are controversial because they can result in serious injury or death, and police and security guards will use them as a first resort in some cases, rather than a last resort. There have been cases similar to this one where police tased a mentally ill suspect and the Dallas wrongful death attorney won the case against police for $2 million. Another $10 million case involved police tasing a teenager.

Contact the Wrongful Death Attorneys

If a loved one had died as the result of a situation arising from someone else’s negligence or carelessness, contact a wrongful death attorney as soon as possible. An experienced wrongful death attorney can help you to pursue a case against the responsible parties. Insurance companies will push people to settle as soon as possible during the time when families are at their most vulnerable and before they truly understand the extent of their loss. Having a wrongful death attorney who can deal with insurance companies and advocate on your behalf maximizes the chances of holding the responsible parties accountable and in making a successful wrongful death case.

The Zevan and Davidson Law Firm are wrongful death lawyers in Missouri and Illinois. Call us today at (314) 588-7200 for a free and private consultation. Although monetary compensation can never return a person’s health or erase the lasting effects of a catastrophic injury, it can alleviate many of the day-to-day problems confronted by personal injury victims and their families.

photo credit: csmyts