Tentative Settlement OKd in Hospital Death of Deputy
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Five years after Sheriff’s Deputy Nelson Yamamoto died at the county’s Martin Luther King Jr. / Drew Medical Center, the county Claims Board approved a tentative settlement this week that would pay his family $97,083 to drop their wrongful-death lawsuit.
Under the agreement, which still must be approved by the Board of Supervisors, the county would also pay the Yamamoto family’s lawyers $55,417, plus $22,500 for the cost of litigation to date.
Yamamoto was 26 in March 1992 when he was shot during an on-duty gun battle. He underwent surgery at the trauma center for several bullet wounds and went into respiratory arrest after doctors gave him a combination of heart medications. An investigation by the district attorney’s office and state medical board sharply criticized Yamamoto’s doctors. The investigators and their panel of medical experts concluded that his death was preventable.
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