Dontrell Stephens, who was shot and paralyzed by Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputy, dies at age 28
An unarmed man who won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit after being paralyzed in a shooting just seconds after being confronted by a deputy with the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office has died, his attorney said Thursday.
Dontrell Stephens fought for seven years to collect compensation for what would amount to a shortened lifetime of medical bills.
He died Aug. 29 at a hospital in Port St. Lucie. He was 28.
Stephens became paralyzed from the waist down after getting shot in the spine by Deputy Adams Lin in 2013. Lin had pursued Stephens for cutting across traffic on his bike. Just 10 feet away from Lin, Stephens was shot four times.
Lin told jurors during the trial he thought Stephens reached for a gun before he fired his service weapon. Stephens said he had his hands up at the time of the shooting. Stephens had a cellphone in his hand. Stephens won a $22.4 million award. An appeals court overturned the judgment against Lin though the judgment against the Sheriff ’s Office remained.
Damages of more than $200,000 in lawsuits involving state and local government in Florida must be granted by the legislature. That requires the passage of a claim bill. The Florida House later voted to award Stephens $6 million. Gov. Ron DeSantis agreed and signed off on the measure in June 2020.
Stephens had been hospitalized for three weeks because of a series of infections arising from from his paralysis, said his attorney Jack Scarola.
Stephens was homeless for about about seven years. At the time he was gunned down, he had just started bouncing around at friends’ homes who would have him.
The day he was shot, he was on a borrowed bike and heading to a store to get something to drink and Lin was doing surveillance near a school looking for unruly drivers. Lin testified in court he became suspicious of Stephens because he did not recognize him from the neighborhood west of West Palm Beach. He used the award money not lost to some $3 million in medical bills to buy a house and get a handicapped-equipped van. The fight for compensation drew the ire of South Florida lawmakers and others when the Sheriff ’s Office lobbyist brought up Stephens’ arrest history.
“I am very saddened by Dontrell’s death,” Scarola said. “He had a very difficult life that was made even far more difficult by the tragically unjustified paralysis. I hope that he did have at least some comfort derived by the modest compensation that he received from the claims bill, but it clearly wasn’t sufficient to provide for the care he needed.”
Information about funeral arrangements was not available Thursday night.