A Colorado city has reached a nearly $2.8 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the mother of a man killed by police in 2021 after taking heroic actions to stop a gunman who had shot another officer, a law firm announced Thursday, the Associated Press reports. Kathleen Boleyn filed the lawsuit in June 2022, a year after the midday shootings in the main square of Olde Town Arvada, a historic shopping and entertainment area about 7 miles (10 kilometers) northwest of downtown Denver. Boleyn said her son, Johnny Hurley, ran toward danger and shot the gunman, Ronald Troyke, who had just fatally shot Officer Gordon Beesley. An investigation found Troyke, who died after Hurley shot him, was intent on killing as many officers as he could that day. “You can’t erase what Johnny did just because his life was erased,” Boleyn said. “Without my son, my life is diminished. But without Johnny’s heroic spirit, the world is diminished. In the two years and three months since this happened, I find that I’m stronger than I thought I was and sadder than I used to be.”
The lawsuit said Hurley, 40, was crouched down with a rifle pointing down and not in a threatening position when he was shot, adding that a witness said Hurley was taking the magazine out of a rifle that he took away from the shooter. A district attorney investigation cleared the officer who shot him, Kraig Brownlow. The investigation said it appeared to the officer that Hurley was reloading the rifle or trying to fix something on it. District Attorney Alexis King has said that Brownlow thought Hurley was a second shooter and that he only had a moment to stop him from hurting others. “Mr. Hurley’s heroic intervention saved lives that day. His bravery and selflessness will never be forgotten,” the Rathod Mohamedbhai law firm and the city of Arvada said in a joint statement. “Recognizing that this was a horrible set of circumstances for all involved, the parties have agreed to settle this matter.”