The estate of a soldier killed by a Moore County Deputy settled its lawsuit for $65,000 on the day trial was to begin, but the county only made the figure public late Thursday.

After that suit was settled, attorneys for the county and a former sheriff's deputy lost a second suit filed by another soldier injured in the same incident. The jury in that trial in federal court in Greensboro in October awarded $650,000 in compensatory and at least $100,000 in punitive damages. No decision has been announced as to whether the defense will appeal.

Deputy Randall Butler shot 1st Lt. Tallas Tomeny and Sgt. Stephen Phelps in the parking lot of Acorn Ridge Baptist Church near Robbins in February 2002. Tomeny died, and Phelps was badly wounded. Both were training to become Green Berets in an exercise called Robin Sage in which student soldiers pretend they have been secretly inserted in a foreign country.

Investigations conducted at the time by the State Bureau of Investigation, the Army's JFK Special Forces Center and School at Fort Bragg and then District Attorney Garland Yates all concluded this was a tragic accident resulting from a misunderstanding. No criminal charges were filed, but two years later Phelps and Tomeny's family sued the county, Lane Carter in his official capacity as sheriff, and Butler, both officially and personally, charging excessive use of force.

Tomeny's estate accepted the $65,000 just made public and dismissed all claims, with no acknowledgment of fault by the defense. At the time, lawyers termed that settlement an economic decision. Money to pay it will come from a risk pool the county belongs to as part of a state insurance scheme.

Phelps got his Green Beret and served as an Special Forces medic and engineer in two deployments each to Afghanistan and Iraq. He left the Army, but works now with a defense contractor.

Butler brought a $5 million suit against the Army, which is still pending and may go to trial early next year. He is presently chief deputy in Lee County.

For more on this story, see Sunday's print edition of The Pilot.