A jury awarded a family $100,000 Tuesday in the case of a Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, police officer who fatally shot a man five years ago. The family had asked for $1.1 million.
The jury found Officer Jeremy Donaldson acted negligently when he shot and killed Spencer Mims III in January 2013, reports WSOC.
Donaldson was responding to a call at a home in south Charlotte. When he got to the scene, Mims was holding a box cutter to his own neck and threatening to kill himself.
Donaldson said that when Mims lunged at him with the box cutter he fired three times, killing Mims.
This was a civil trial and both the police department and the district attorney's office have said Donaldson did not violate policy or break the law in the shooting.
