Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – Columbus city council approves $10 million settlement with family of Andre Hill

Introduction To This Series:

This post is one installment in an ongoing news series: a “living history” of the current national and international uprising for justice.

Today’s movement descends directly from the many earlier civil rights struggles against repeated injustices and race-based violence, including the killing of unarmed Black people. The posts in this series serve as a timeline of the uprising that began on May 26, 2020, the day after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck. The viral video of Floyd’s torturous suffocation brought unprecedented national awareness to the ongoing demand to truly make Black Lives Matter in this country.

The posts in this series focus on stories of the particular killings that have spurred the current uprising and on the protests taking place around the USA and across the globe. Sadly, thousands of people have lost their lives to systemic racial, gender, sexuality, judicial, and economic injustice. The few whose names are listed here represent the countless others lost before and since. Likewise, we can report but a few of the countless demonstrations for justice now taking place in our major cities, small towns, and suburbs.

Columbus city council approves $10 million settlement with family of Andre Hill

The figure is the highest amount ever paid by the city, split into two $5 million payments, and includes an agreement to rename a local gymnasium.

By Doha Madani, NBC News

May 17, 2021

A $10 million settlement between the family of Andre Hill and the city of Columbus, Ohio, was approved in a city council vote on Monday evening, formalizing a deal announced last week.

The figure is the highest amount ever paid by the city and follows widespread outrage over Hill’s death, who was fatally shot by a now-former police officer as he walked out of the garage of a home in December. Council members approved the deal during a meeting held over teleconference Monday evening…

The $10 million sum will be split into two payments, one by the end of the 2021 calendar year and the other half dispersed in the first quarter of 2022, according to the settlement agreement. It also includes an agreement to rename a local gymnasium in Hill’s honor by the end of the year…

Hill was shot and killed when officers responded to a call that a person in a vehicle kept turning the engine on and off on the night of Dec. 22.

Officer Adam Coy was fired from the Columbus Division of Police in December and indicted in connection to Hill’s death. He pleaded not guilty to charges of murder in the commission of a felony, felonious assault and reckless homicide…

Neither Coy nor the second officer who responded turned their body cameras on until immediately after the shooting. However, an automatic “look back” function captured the shooting without audio.

Video showed Coy using his flashlight as he and the other officer walked up the driveway of a home where Hill was a guest. Hill exited the garage holding a cellphone in his hand and began walking toward the officers when he was shot four times by Coy.

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