City Council Approves $1M Settlement In Springfield Teen's Death

WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Paul Tuthill

Published October 7, 2014 at 2:43 PM EDT

The city council in Springfield, Massachusetts has voted to pay $1 million to the family of a teenager who died after an encounter with police.

The settlement was negotiated by lawyers for the city and the family of Delano Walker Jr. Last month a federal court jury found a city police officer had violated the civil rights of Walker and awarded his family $1.3 million. The settlement means the city will drop an appeal. City councilor Bud Williams said it is time for healing

" You have a police officer who probably feels bad, you have a family who certainly feels bad after losing a loved-one. It is time to move on."

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Paul Tuthill

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.

See stories by Paul Tuthill

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