The US Department of Justice offered $144 million to settle a mass shooting lawsuit

The US Department of Justice announced a tentative settlement of 144.5 million dollars with the families of the victims of a 2017 mass shooting in a Texan church, as a representative told media in a press conference. A former US Air Force member carried out the massacre.

In a public statement, the Justice Department and the families' lawyer, Jamal Alsaffar, clarified that the settlement is still subject to court approvals. Alsaffar said it was not yet final, and the families have been fighting for justice.

The Sutherland Springs mass shooting occurred at the First Baptist Church during a Sunday service in November 2017. According to local media accounts of the event, Devin Patrick Kelley, a former Air Force member, opened fire against the attendees.

Twenty-five people were killed, but one of the victims was a pregnant woman, so authorities put the death toll at 26. According to the Associated Press (AP), it was one of the deadliest mass shootings in Texan history.

The shooter fled the scene after two armed men that heard the church gunshots confronted and shot him. Later, police found him dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, explained the AP's recollections.

Kelley was a member of the Air Force for nearly five years before being expelled for bad behavior after he was convicted of domestic abuse and had a criminal history. According to the AP, he assaulted a former wife and his stepson and cracked the child's skull.

The Air Force failed to submit Kelley's domestic abuse charges to the FBI database. The institution later admitted that it would have been impossible for the man to purchase weapons at an authorized distributor if they had done it, as stated in a recollection by The Washington Post.

That negligence led US District Judge Xavier Rodriguez to declare that Air Force was "60% liable" for the mass shooting. According to several media accounts of the trial, he ruled that the rest of the responsibility was in Kelley's hands.

The conviction would have been a red flag in the mandatory background check, but, as reported by local media after the shooting, the former Air Force member purchased four guns after being discharged in 2014. He took three of those to the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.

In a public statement, Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general for the Justice Department, said: "No words or amount of money can diminish the immense tragedy of the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs."

"Today's announcement brings the litigation to a close, ending a painful chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime," Gupta added, referring to the tentative settlement for the families.

The families' attorney said that "they are heroes" in another public statement collected by the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. "The country owes them a debt of gratitude," Alsaffar added, "they have gone through so much pain and loss in the most horrific way."

The possible settlement comes after five years of litigation. It is closing a long-running lawsuit with several back-and-forths in the last few months as collected by several US media outlets. After the trial ended, there were appeals.

The settlement is considerably smaller than the 230 million dollars that Rodriguez ordered the Department of Justice to pay the families and victims of the shootings last year.

In January, the Department of Justice surprised the families with an appeal to the first settlement order to reduce the amount of money. According to NPR, "That position stunned gun-control advocates and received praise from the National Rifle Association."

According to NPR, if the concession passes, this would be the third time the Government settles a mass shooting lawsuit with a payment. It also did that with the 2015 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, and in 2018 with the Parkland high school in Florida.