Columbus City Council OKs $1M settlement for wrongfully removing child from home

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Columbus City Council on Monday night approved a $1 million settlement for a father and his son after a 2023 incident in which the father said two city police officers took his 7-year-old son and gave him to the mother, who did not have custody.

The father's lawyer told NBC4 that the mother had a criminal history and had not been sending the child to school. She took the child and went on the run.

The U.S. Marshals Service tracked her down seven months later, finding the child alive the next day.

The city agreed to settle with the father for $1 million.

"To the family, it means accountability," said Bart Keyes, a lawyer with Cooper Elliott. "It means that somebody finally listened and said, yes, this should not have happened. This was a very traumatizing situation for Lonnie and for his son and part of the reason for that was that seven months went by where it felt like nobody was listening and nobody was doing enough to try to find the mother and where she had taken the son."

"This was a horrible, unintentional mistake by two of our officers," the director of public safety said in a statement. "These officers incorrectly interpreted legal documents from the court, mistaking a court-stamped court motion for a court order."

The director also said the Office of the Inspector General investigation resulted in a "sustained" finding against the officers, both of which were re-trained and received corrective counseling.