Wal-Mart agrees to $750K settlement in 2005 death

Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a suspected shoplifter who suffocated in August 2005 when a Wal-Mart employee chased him out of the Atascocita store and sat on him in the store's parking lot. Stacy Clay Driver, the suspect, was believed to have exchanged stolen goods for $94 worth of store credit on a gift certificate; a loss-prevention employee at the store chased Driver and sat on him as he lay face-down on the parking lot, which an examination found to have caused his death. "One or more people were on his body and he couldn't breathe," Brad Frye, an attorney for the family, said. "This was a senseless, senseless death."

When Driver died, he was on probation for a similar gift-card scam at a Polk County Wal-Mart, and he had signed an agreement to never enter another of the chain's stores. An autopsy showed he had methamphetamine in his system when he died Aug. 7, 2005, and listed overheating with methamphetamine toxicity as a contributing factor in his death. Frye said the meth might have contributed to Driver's death, but didn't cause it — and we suppose Wal-Mart agreed. (Last summer, a grand jury declined to indict anyone in the case.)

According to court documents, $550,000 will be paid initially to Driver's wife, Wendy, his son, Ashton, and his father, H.C. Driver. Ashton — who will turn 2 in July — will get $25,000 on his 25th birthday, nearly $70,000 on his 30th and $100,000 on his 35th. Wal-Mart corporate headquarters didn't comment on the settlement Thursday, but Driver's stepmother, Pat Driver, said the money "doesn't bring him back, it doesn't help the pain, it doesn't end anything."