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Former Pleasantville police officer Aaron Hess, who was off-duty in Pleasantville, called to report a disturbance outside Finnegan’s on Oct. 17, 2010, where members of the Pace football team were celebrating after their homecoming game.
Hess remained at the scene, and when Henry was instructed to move his vehicle out of a fire zone, the former police officer alleged that it had struck him, he landed on the hood of the car and he opened fire. Paramedics responded to the scene to treat Hess for a leg injury while Henry bled out on the pavement.
This week, Desmond Hinds, who was a passenger at the time of the shooting, was reportedly awarded $75,000 by a federal jury in White Plains court.
In 2016, Henry's family accepted a $6 million settlement from Hess and the town of Mount Pleasant. Town officials at the time admitted that "statements made by its officials in the hours after the incident caused additional pain to the Henry family.” Another teammate was awarded $150,000 last summer.
"I think the jurors decided with their hearts instead of with their brains," a lawyer for Hess said to the Journal News last year. "I think the verdict was motivated by sympathy. The jurors heard time and time again about D.J. Henry, but he was not a plaintiff in this case. And the reason the plaintiff kept playing the D.J. Henry angle, in my view, was to tug at the heartstrings of the jurors
"Aaron Hess did not really get to testify about how this incident affected him," he said. "The jurors heard that he lost his career as a police officer, but it affects him to this day."
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