COLUMBUS, Georgia (AP) – A local Georgia government on Tuesday agreed to pay $ 500,000 to settle a family lawsuit of a Hispanic man who died in a 2017 battle with police officers.
The members of the Columbus Council met in closed session and approved the settlement with Hector Arreola’s family, news outlets reported.
“The council decided that it was in the best interests of all concerned to involve the Arreola family, law enforcement agencies and the citizens of Columbus, Georgia,” Mayor Skip Henderson told WRBL-TV after the vote. “It gives us the opportunity to perhaps begin a healing.”
Councilor Walker Garrett, an attorney who moved to resolve the lawsuit, said the settlement was unrelated to any criminal case a district attorney could pursue against the officers.
“We think the judge made a pretty strong statement that there was very little evidence of a murder charge in this case,” Garrett said. “We are now focusing on the civil aspect and it allows the family to begin the healing process.”
An Arreola family attorney, Mark Post, issued a statement that the family believes the civil process is complete, the Ledger Enquirer reported.
“The Arreola family is pleased that this issue has been resolved and hopes that this resolution can bring some degree of healing to the community,” said Post.
Arreola’s father, Rodrigo Arreola, signed the settlement agreement on July 9th. It says $ 490,000 will go to Hector Arreola’s young child’s guardian and $ 10,000 to his estate, which is managed by Rodrigo Arreola.
The deal says the police officers did nothing wrong and says the city offered the settlement without the officers’ consent. The officers “expressly deny any liability, responsibility and potential liability,” and the comparison “should not be construed as an admission of liability,” the agreement says.
The story goes on
NAACP leaders in Columbus have compared the death of Arreola to that of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Columbus NAACP division president Wane Hailes said Arreola said he couldn’t breathe 16 times when an officer sat on him for more than two minutes while Arreola was handcuffed.
The officers were on leave during an investigation but are back on duty.
In June, U.S. District Judge Clay Land ruled that he would not dismiss officers Michael Aguilar, Brian Dudley, and Aaron Evrard for wrongful death, despite their concerns that the District Attorney would try them on criminal charges. Land said he doesn’t believe they can be successfully prosecuted for a crime.
Officials requested a postponement of the civil case after Muscogee County’s District Attorney Mark Jones appointed private attorney Christopher Breault as special attorney investigating Arreola’s death. Jones said he hoped Breault would be ready to bring the case on trial for possible indictment during the ongoing trial that ends in August.
The officers’ attorneys argued that the criminal investigation was hampering their defense in the civil suit and said they could testify if they were not forced to use their fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incriminating.
Arreola died while being arrested for misconduct. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s first autopsy report revealed that he died of methamphetamine poisoning. But the agency changed the report last year to say that Arreola died from manslaughter. The change changed the cause of death to “sudden cardiac death after a fight with law enforcement, including the restraint of the prone position, which makes acute methamphetamine toxicity difficult”.
The lawsuit alleged that the cardiac arrest was due to brain damage caused by the violence that officers used to hold him.
Land wrote that the statute of limitations on all possible state charges other than murder has expired and that the evidence he has seen shows that it is unlikely that prosecutors could prove that the officers acted with willful malice or killed Arreola, while they committed a separate crime. These are the reasons for murder under Georgia’s law.
Jones said last month he respected Land’s judgment, but the criminal case should be heard by a grand jury.
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