Bexar County Pays $5 Million Over Deputies' Fatal Shooting of 6-Year-Old Boy Inside His Family's Home
Won by Crosley Law.
Bexar County agreed to pay $5 million to resolve a federal civil-rights suit after sheriff's deputies fatally shot 6-year-old Kameron Prescott inside his family's home during a 2017 manhunt, with Tom Crosley representing the boy's father.
What happened
On December 21, 2017, four Bexar County sheriff's deputies were closing in on Amanda Jones, a woman wanted on warrants for credit card abuse and fraud, at the end of a search that had run for roughly two hours. The pursuit ended at a mobile home community where the Prescott family lived. Jones had no connection to the family. As she tried to get away from deputies, she went into the Prescotts' home uninvited.
Six-year-old Kameron Prescott was inside with his father. Believing Jones was armed, the four deputies fired about 18 to 20 rounds from AR-15 rifles and .40 caliber handguns. Two of those rounds struck Kameron in his bedroom. He and Jones were both killed. Jones turned out to be unarmed, and Bexar County later acknowledged there was no evidence she had a weapon.
In December 2019, Kameron's father, Christopher Prescott, filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division. Tom Crosley of Crosley Law represented him. (Kameron's mother, Rubi, was represented by separate counsel.) The complaint brought a claim under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, the federal statute that lets people sue government officials for violating their civil rights, and named Bexar County, Sheriff Javier Salazar, and the four deputies: Johnny Aguillon, George Herrera, Jesse Arias, and Johny Longoria.
Crosley pointed to the deputies' body-camera footage, arguing it showed nothing that justified the decision to open fire on an occupied residence. The sheriff's office had said deputies saw something in Jones's hand that they took for a weapon. The plaintiffs' position was that deputies sent a barrage of high-powered rifle and handgun fire into a home over a nonviolent fraud suspect, and that a child died as a result.
An early $2 million figure was rejected before the two sides reached a larger deal. In the spring of 2021, Bexar County agreed to pay $5 million to close the case, with the money coming from the county's insurer, One Beacon. Because the matter resolved by settlement, there was no jury award and no later reduction or remittitur. The agreement directed $4.5 million to Kameron's parents and $500,000 to Amanda Jones's mother.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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