With just more than a week to go before they were to meet in federal court, lawyers for the city and for the family of Nathaniel Sanders II have reached a tentative agreement to settle the family’s civil rights suit against the city and former Austin Police Department Officer Leonardo Quintana, who shot and killed Sanders in the parking lot of an East Austin apartment complex in the early morning of May 11, 2009. Quintana was cleared by the department of wrongdoing in connection with the shooting but was fired earlier this year after he was popped in January for drunken driving. (Quintana is appealing his termination.) The city has offered $750,000 to settle the case before trial, an offer that will need to be approved by council members when they return from their summer hiatus at the end of the month.
This article appears in July 16 • 2010.