$1.5M Settlement Reached in Deputy's Wrongful Death
Posted
Aaron Organ-aorgan@timesuniononline.com
A $1.5 million settlement was reached Thursday in a wrongful death suit involving the 2009 traffic death of Sgt. Jeff Shaw of the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department.
Indianapolis attorney Roy Tabor told the Times-Union that back-and-forth negotiations finally found a settlement nine days ago with Steven L. Byerly, of Fort Wayne, who was named as the defendant in the wrongful death suit filed after Shaw’s death Nov. 12, 2009.
The settlement was approved Thursday in Kosciusko Circuit Court.
The sum aims to provide a bit of consolation for Shaw’s widow, Angie, and the couple’s two children.
“The settlement, we believe, is going to give Angie and the children some measure of closure and justice,” said Tabor. “In the civil system, monetary sums are the only remedies available.”
Shaw, 40, of Warsaw, was on patrol around 2:47 p.m. on Ind. 14 near Silver Lake when a 1994 GMC straight truck with a load of scaffolding, driven by Byerly, struck his vehicle near the intersection with CR 100E.
Police said then that Byerly drove partially off the south side of the road, overcorrected and crossed the center line, hitting Shaw's patrol car, a 2007 Ford Crown Victoria.
Shaw’s vehicle was hit in the driver door, and both vehicles caught fire shortly after the impact.
A witness to the crash helped Byerly out of the truck, but Shaw was trapped and had to be extricated by members of fire departments who responded to the scene.
Shaw, an 11-year veteran deputy who began his law enforcement career in July 1994 as a jail officer in the work release department before being promoted to deputy four years later, was taken to Kosciusko Community Hospital, where he was pronounced dead from blunt force trauma.
Byerly also was taken to KCH, where he was treated for a minor head injury, then released.
In the nearly two years that followed, after filing the wrongful death suit against Byerly, a masonry foreman for A-1 Construction, Tabor said negotiations between the sides to settle out of court failed. They resumed this month, Tabor said, and a settlement was reached.
“Jeff is the kind of guy who would want to make sure that his family was taken care of,” said Tabor. “This helps that.”
