KWCH - Kansas News and Weather - City Settles with Hearing Impaired Man

City Settles with Hearing Impaired Man

(WICHITA, Kan.)

One taser, a $50,000 price tag.  Tuesday the Wichita City Council voted to settle a lawsuit with a man tased inside his own home in 2007.

Back then, officers said they had to use the taser because the man wouldn't follow their instructions.

That's because he couldn't hear them - he was hearing-impaired.

The city's law department says it is not admitting to any wrong doing on the officers' part. But it believes the $50,000 settlement will save time, and money.

The city's law department says it does not want the case to go to a jury - officers using a taser on a hearing-impaired man in his own home.

"I was mad but I was scared and shocked about it," Donnell Williams told Eyewitness News in 2007. "I've never had a gun pointed at me."

He said then he's basically deaf without his hearing aid, and he was without it the night in November of 2007 police busted into his house on North Estelle.

Williams said he had just gotten out of the bathtub, wearing only a towel.

He couldn't understand the officers' instructions to show his hands -- so they used a taser on him.

Officers say they were concerned of their own safety. They were responding to a shooting that turned out to be a false call.

The settlement money will come from the tort claims fund, and if Williams accepts the payment, he can't make any other claims regarding this incident.