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Two women who accused the Maine State Police of failing to protect them before a deadly 2015 rampage have agreed to settle a lawsuit against the agency.
Brittany Irish will receive $250,000 from the settlement, while her mother Kimberly Irish will receive $100,000 and another $150,000 will go to the estate of Kyle Hewitt, with whom Brittany Irish had two children, according to the Portland Press Herald.
As part of the settlement, the state police continue to deny liability, while the two women have agreed to not disparage the state publicly or privately, the Press Herald reported.
In the lawsuit, Brittany Irish said she called, in July 2015, the state police and Bangor police to report that Anthony Lord had kidnapped her from her Bangor home and raped her and to demand his arrest and protection from him.
Police allegedly refused, saying they did not have enough manpower to park a car at Kimberly Irish’s Benedicta home or to offer Brittany Irish and her children police protection, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claimed the officers violated the Irishes’ civil rights by putting them in danger of violence.
Lord, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 2015 rampage, blamed his actions on the death of his infant son in May 2015. He became enraged when police told him Brittany Irish had accused him of sexaully assaulting her a few days before the rampage, the lawsuit alleged.
Lord admitted to murdering Brittany Irish’s boyfriend, 22-year-old Hewitt of Bangor and Benedicta, and Kevin Tozier, 58, of Lee. He also pleaded guilty to shooting and wounding Clayton McCarthy and Carlton Eddy, in addition to wounding Kimberly Irish and assaulting Kary Mayo with a hammer during his rampage across two counties on July 16 and 17, 2015, before he was arrested in Aroostook County.
In addition to those crimes, he burned Kimberly Irish’s barn, stole firearms from Mayo’s home and led police on a high-speed chase.
Lord was never charged with sexually assaulting Brittany Irish.
Brittany and Kimberly Irish filed their lawsuit against the state police in 2017. Federal judges ruled that Troopers Jason Fowler, Micah Perkins and Darren Crane, who still work with the state police, aren’t shielded from the lawsuit by qualified immunity, according to the Press Herald. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that decision in October 2021.
The suit appeared set to go to trial before it was removed from a trial list in February. The settlement agreement was signed on June 8, and the money dispersed on June 15, the newspaper reported.