The small front range town of Rocky Ford will pay $1.3 million to the family of a man whom the Colorado Bureau of Investigation says was wrongly shot to death by a police officer.
The settlement includes payments to Jack Jacquez’s three minor children and his mother.
Officer James Ashby was on-duty when he chased Jacquez into his mother’s home in October 2014 and shot him in the back as she watched. Ashby was sentenced to 16 years in prison for second-degree murder.
The CBI found that Ashby had no reason to believe Jacquez was committing a crime before he was killed. Ashby told investigators Jacquez mouthed off to him when he stopped him as he was skateboarding.
Ashby was the first Colorado police officer to face charges for an on-duty shooting in more than 20 years.
