PHILADELPHIA — Allentown agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a federal lawsuit over the death of a 4-year-old boy who was standing on a sidewalk when a police cruiser struck him, according to court papers filed Friday.<\/p>\n
Daviay Legrand<\/strong> died in May 2007 when two Allentown police cars collided downtown while responding to a report of a man with a gun. The crash sent one cruiser onto the sidewalk, killing the boy and severely injuring family friend Jason Marcelle<\/strong>. Furious residents later massed at the crash scene and threw bottles and rocks at police.<\/p>\n An investigation by state police found that rookie Officer Brett Guth<\/strong> caused the crash by running a red light, though speed was not a factor. He was later fired but not charged.<\/p>\n A lawsuit filed in October 2007 by Daviay’s mother, Crystal Legrand<\/strong>, claimed the city’s decision to hire Guth violated her son’s civil rights. The officer had a history of speeding offenses.<\/p>\n Legrand<\/strong> had been seeking $8 million for herself and two surviving children, all of whom witnessed the crash. Neither the city nor the officers involved admit fault in the settlement, which must be approved by a federal magistrate and the City Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PHILADELPHIA — Allentown agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a federal lawsuit over the death of a 4-year-old boy who was standing on a sidewalk when a police cruiser struck him, according to court papers filed Friday. Daviay Legrand died in May 2007 when two Allentown police cars collided downtown while responding to a report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}