$10 Million Award Money Given to Shot Tahoe Vacationer Victim
Recently, a Silicon Valley software engineer got paid by a Northern California county to settle a lawsuit. According to official court records, the litigation involves a deputy shooting the software engineer for having a mental health crisis at the time. The incident occurred in Lake Tahoe two years ago, leaving the latter’s waist down of his body paralyzed.
50-year-old Samuel Kolb and his family got paid by Placer County to resolve the lawsuit filed after a deputy gunned him twice on January 14, 2018. Kolb recounted the events to the news, stating that the incident happened while he and his teenage son went on a vacation trip and rented a cabin at Northern Lake Tahoe. Kolb’s family obtained a money settlement amounting to $9.9 million.
Despite the hefty amount of money paid to Kolb, he expressed his regrets about the thought that he would never get his old life back after the two-year incident. According to Kolb, no amount of money and added interest could make him go back to the past and avoided the situation from happening. Nevertheless, Kolby felt assured that deciding to take the settlement would relieve him and his family of going into more rigorous and stressful legal battles regarding the filed legal action.
The Lawsuit’s Documented Events of Kolb’s and Honeycutt’s Shooting Incident
On January 14, 2018, Kolb and his son traveled to Lake Tahoe for a ski trip vacation from their home in San Mateo. While they stayed in a cabin in Carnelian Bay, Kolb woke up around dawn and went around the deckhouse pacing uncomfortably.
According to Kolb’s attorney Ronald Kaye, the former woke up his 16-year-old son and requested him to get medical assistance. Moreover, the court documents described Kolb’s son calling 911 during that time and reported that his father was “in a dream-like state.” The son further told the paramedics that he and his father went to smoke marijuana before going to bed. He also revealed that his father had a history of temporal lobe epilepsy.
The lawsuit filed by Attorney Kaye documented that such a medical disability did not spring up often, and the last incident that made Kolb suffer happened in the past 15 years. People with temporal lobe epilepsy causes them to feel sudden emotions of anger, sadness, anxiety, or fear. According to Kaye, Kolb’s son only requested medical help and did not believe that his father is a threat to his safety.
Furthermore, the filed litigation detailed that Kolb and his son waited outside their cabin in the cold until Placer County Deputy Chris Honeycutt arrived at the scene. Instead of escorting Kolb inside his patrol car to await medical intervention, Honeycutt instructed the father and son to go back inside their cabin. Kolb was only wearing pajama bottoms and a short-sleeved shirt during that time.
Kolb suddenly grabbed a 10-inch carving fork once he, his son, and Honeycutt got inside their rented cabin. In response to the situation, Honeycutt “repeatedly” dispatched his office-issued firearm and shot Kolb.
The Placer County Sherriff’s Office released its official statement via Facebook to address the incident. According to the posted account, Kolb stabbed Honeycutt with a sharp weapon, causing the latter to believe his life was in danger and fired his gun as an act of self-defense. A few days after the issued declaration, a sheriff’s office’s representative said that Kolb used a large barbecue skewer to attack the deputy.
The Litigation’s Final Dismissal and the Sheriff’s Office’s Perspective on Kolb’s Case
The depicted events of the incident got included in the lawsuit filed to the court, which is subject to dismissal on Monday. On Tuesday, a federal court approved the petition.
On Tuesday, Placer County Sheriff’s Office’s spokeswoman Angela Musallam replied to the press that the sheriff’s office does not have anything to say regarding the lawsuit.
