The University of the Incarnate Word has agreed to settle a wrongful death suit filed by the family of Cameron Redus, a student who was shot and killed by a campus police officer nearly nine years ago, said an attorney representing the family.
A long-delayed civil trial for the 2014 suit that had been scheduled to begin Monday has been canceled, court records showed Thursday.
Brent Perry, lead attorney for the Redus family, said terms of the proposed settlement are confidential but that his clients are satisfied by it and what has been achieved by the suit. He said final details of the settlement will be hammered out in the next few days and that a statement from the family would be forthcoming.
The university said it had no comment at this time.
In 2013, UIW police officer Christoper Carter pulled Redus over at his apartment complex near campus. Carter told Alamo Heights police he decided to follow Redus after he observed his car weaving on Broadway.
When Carter attempted to arrest Redus outside of his apartment, a struggle ensued and the officer fired six shots at close range, killing Redus.
After the shooting, administrators placed Carter on extended leave before he eventually resigned. A Bexar County grand jury declined to indict Carter on criminal charges in 2015.
The family filed suit in 2014 against the university and Carter. The case wound through the courts for years as the university argued its police force was entitled to government immunity. In 2020, the Texas Supreme Court rejected that argument and allowed the case to proceed. The university also lost a subsequent court appeal last month.
Carter had held a number of jobs as a police officer in the years before the shooting, and has been allegedly involved in a number of troubling episodes before the shooting, San Antonio Report co-founder and columnist Robert Rivard has reported.
In 2019, when the case was being heard by the Texas Supreme Court, UIW President Thomas Evans, who took office in 2017, told the San Antonio Report that he would like the long-running legal battle “to be resolved.”
Perry told the San Antonio Report at that time that the school had declined previous settlement terms offered by the family.
