NC Industrial Commission Grants Benefits to Widow of Officer Killed in Mass Shooting

The family of a Raleigh police officer will receive workers’ compensation survivor benefits, even though the man was not officially at work when he was killed, the North Carolina Industrial Commission decided this week.

Gabriel Torres was killed in a mass shooting in his own neighborhood in 2022. He had just left for work that day when he heard gunshots at a neighbor’s house and stopped to investigate, according to news reports. He was not in uniform.

The city of Raleigh denied his widow’s workers’ comp claim. But the Industrial Commission has now ruled that Torres was responding to the sound of gunfire and was in the course and scope of his employment at the time, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

Torres’ family will receive two-thirds of his weekly salary plus burial costs. Jasmin Torres will see about $321 a week for 500 weeks, and the daughter will receive $321 a week until she turns 18, according to news reports and the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute’s compilation of state benefits.

The family also will see an additional $200,000 under a recent change in the law that provides extra indemnity benefits when an officer is murdered, not just killed, on the job, the Industrial Commission decided.

Jasmin Torres, who was on her way home at the time, found her husband in his car, parked near the neighbor’s house. A 15-year-old, Austin Thompson, has been charged with killing the officer and four others at the Headingham neighborhood. He also reportedly shot his brother at another house, according to news reports.

Thompson, who reportedly shot himself in the rampage but was not fatally injured, has asked that his trial be delayed. His father has pleaded guilty to improperly storing the handgun used in the shooting. A lawsuit contends that the youth had been involved in several altercations in the neighborhood and was accused of making racist and violent threats, news sites have reported.

Topics
North Carolina