Rather see a guilty verdict: Son of man killed by Harnett deputy says settlement bittersweet
The son of a man killed in November 2015 by a Harnett County deputy said the $6 million settlement his family will share in is bittersweet.
John Livingston Jr. is the namesake of John David Livingston, who was 33 when Deputy Nicholas Kehagias fatally shot him on his front porch.
Witnesses said Kehagias barged into the home that night after Livingston told him the person he was looking for didn't live there, and the deputy then yanked him out of a chair, threw him to the ground, repeatedly used a stun gun and pepper spray on him and even put a gun to his head.
Kehagias, who resigned from the force seven months later, said he was forced to shoot Livingston when Livingston grabbed his stun gun and tried to use it on him. Witnesses said Livingston never had control of the stun gun, but a grand jury declined to indict Kehagias on any criminal charge.
Livingston Jr. spoke exclusively to WRAL News after the settlement was reached in a lawsuit filed by his family and five other plaintiffs against six current or former members of the Harnett County Sheriff's Office.
"In my opinion, I'd rather, honestly, get to where Kehagias is guilty," he said.
"That money ain't going to buy my dad back. There's a lot of things I wish I could have done with my dad in the past five, six years that I wasn't able to do because of Kehagias.
"It's honestly just the little things, just talking to him. Every day, I think about him," Livingston Jr. said, getting choked up as he did so.
Livingston said he believes there was a culture of corruption in the sheriff's office that led to his father's death.
"There's a lot of corrupt cops out there, and it's sad to say," he said.
Raleigh-based attorney Robert Zaytoun, who represented Livingston's family and the other plaintiffs, said the case was about rogue law enforcement.
"This went all the way up to the top. It was condoned, it was enabled, by the highest reaches of the Harnett County Sheriff's Department," he said.
Kehagias now works as a sheriff’s deputy in Pender County. "That's super-scary to me," Livingston Jr. said.
WRAL News reached out to the attorney who represented Kehagias and the rest of the defendants from the sheriff’s office. He declined to comment on their behalf.
Zaytoun said he hopes the case and the costs send a message to other law enforcement agencies.
"We need better training of officers. We need psychological training of officers. And in this case, it's absolutely clear that the three officers involved had no clue of the basic constitutional rights of citizens in their home.
"It's not about getting rid of policing. It is just that we can police better. We can do it better, and it needs to be better, not just for one segment of our society, but all citizens deserve good policing," Zaytoun said.
