The US Department of Justice on Wednesday agreed to pay $144.5 million to victims of a 2017 shooting at a Texas church, to end a “negligence” lawsuit.
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More than 75 people affected by this tragedy, which left 26 dead and 22 injured, had filed a civil complaint against the federal government, which they accused of not having prevented the author of the massacre from buying a firearm.
The latter, Devin Kelley, a 26-year-old former Air Force corporal, was sentenced in 2012 by a court-martial for violence against his wife and for having broken the skull of her child. He had also been committed to a psychiatric clinic while in the military after threatening to kill his superiors.
AFP
Federal law prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from purchasing firearms. But the US Air Force had not transmitted his record to the federal police, which is responsible for checking criminal records during arms sales.
Devin Kelley had therefore been able to build up an arsenal. Armed with an AR-15 type assault rifle, he broke into a church in the small town of Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, November 5, 2017, during mass and opened fire on the faithful, including children.
A federal court ruled in 2021 that the government could be held partly responsible for the carnage and ordered it to pay plaintiffs $230 million. The US Department of Justice appealed.
The agreement announced on Wednesday, which must still be approved by a court, will put an end to this procedure.
“No words and no amount of money can ever alleviate the immense tragedy of Sutherland Springs,” Vanita Gupta, a senior Justice Department official, said in a statement. But this announcement closes “a difficult chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime,” she said.
In 2022, the government had already agreed to pay $127.5 million to victims of a high school bloodbath in Parkland, Florida, to end 40 complaints that accused the FBI of failing to follow up on two “pipes” informing him of the dangerousness of the shooter.
In 2021, he paid $ 88 million to the relatives of nine African Americans killed by a white supremacist in a Charleston church in 2015 and to the survivors of the tragedy, to close similar lawsuits.