$1.25 Million Settlement for Family of Man Shot 14 Times by LMPD Officers

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. on August 8, 2016, Louisville Metro Police officers responded to a domestic-disturbance call at the Broadleaf Arms Apartments in southwestern Louisville. The caller reported that Darnell Wicker, 57, had entered the building with what she believed was a knife. When officers arrived, Wicker was holding a 20-inch tree saw. Officers Beau Gadegaard and Taylor Banks fired 14 rounds. Wicker died before reaching the hospital.

Wicker had been in a relationship with the apartment's resident for more than two decades. What the 911 caller described as a knife turned out to be the saw. Body camera footage showed Wicker making a motion toward officers before the shots were fired, but only one officer had his camera activated at all. Officer Gadegaard, who had accumulated at least ten use-of-force reports in his first 18 months on the force and was repeatedly chastised for failing to activate his body camera, received a brief suspension for the camera violation in this incident. A Commonwealth's Attorney review cleared both officers of criminal charges.

Wicker's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in September 2016, arguing that the force used was excessive given the circumstances and that the city had ignored warning signs about Officer Gadegaard's conduct. Cincinnati civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein and Louisville attorney Sam Aguiar represented the family, with Aguiar representing Wicker's daughters. The family's legal team pressed not only on the shooting itself but on the city's failure to act on Gadegaard's documented pattern of behavior before the fatal encounter.

Louisville Metro Government settled the lawsuit on December 31, 2019, paying $1.25 million to Wicker's family. No criminal charges were ever filed against the officers. In February 2020, the suspension Gadegaard had received for the camera failure was reduced further to a written reprimand, and he remained employed by LMPD after the settlement.