Parties in a federal lawsuit concerning the shooting death of a 6-year-old boy reached an undisclosed settlement late last Thursday.
The lawsuit was filed by Christopher Few and other family members of Jeremy Mardis -- a 6-year-old autistic child who was shot and killed during a traffic stop on Nov. 3, 2015.
“All I can say is the matter is settled,” Few’s attorney Mark Jeansonne of Hessmer said. “The judge sealed everything. He put a pretty tight order on us” not to divulge details of the settlement.
Jeansonne said he agrees with Federal Magistrate Judge H.L. Perez-Montes’ decision to keep the amount secret. The matter would have gone to trial before the magistrate had a settlement not be reached. Perez-Montes had instructed all parties to negotiate in good faith to reach an out-of-court settlement.
“Hopefully it will go away a lot quicker this way,” he added.
U.S. District Judge Dee Drell signed the order Thursday, stipulating the court can reopen the case if the settlement is not consummated within 90 days.
Few, Jeremy’s father, was critically wounded when Ward 2/Marksville City Marshal’s deputies Derrick Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr. fired 18 bullets into Few’s stopped or almost stopped vehicle that night.
The defendants in the suit included the two deputy marshals, the Avoyelles Police Jury, Marksville City Council, Ward/City Marshal Floyd Voinche, Ward/City Court, Progressive Paloverde Insurance Company, deputy marshal Jason Brouillette and Marksville P.D. officer Kenneth Parnell III.
Jeansonne said he could not divulge whether all defendants participated in the total settlement or the percentage of the settlement each defendant paid.
After the first day of the two-day conference yielded no results, both the Police Jury and City Council called special meetings to consider increasing their initial settlement offers.
The Police Jury met at noon last Thursday and took an hour to reach a narrow decision to raise their offer.
Only six of the nine members attended and approved the new offer on a 4-2 vote. The motion could have died on a tie had Juror Marsha Wiley voted with her heart instead of her head.
“I really don’t want to vote for this,” Wiley said, adding that voting “No” posed too great a risk to the parish.
She insisted that the settlement include a provision that prevents the plaintiffs from coming back to the jury for any additional compensation related to the Nov. 3, 2015 event.
Jurors Charles Jones, Kirby Roy and Mark Borrel also voted for the settlement. Jurors Trent Clark and John Earles voted against the motion.
The City Council met at 1 p.m. Thursday -- unaware of the Police Jury’s action -- and discussed the matter for about 30 minutes before coming back into open session to unanimously approve granting City Attorney Derrick Whittington “additional authority” in negotiating a settlement.
In addition to citing the fatal shooting, the suit also claimed the four officers at the scene “initially and erroneously believed or assumed that Jeremy was dead, simply did not care whether or not he was alive.”
The lawsuit stated Jeremy suffered greatly in his last few minutes of life and calls the officers’ actions a “barbaric and excessive use of force.”
Stafford, who fired 14 bullets into the vehicle, was convicted of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter. He was sentenced to a total of 40 years. He is appealing his sentence.
Just prior to jury selection in his trial, Greenhouse pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and malfeasance by a police officer and was sentenced to a total of 7 1/2 years. Greenhouse fired four bullets that night, but forensic tests could not match any of the bullets that struck the victims to his firearm.
Both are serving their sentences at Wade Correctional Center near Homer in Claiborne Parish.