More than two years after he was shot by Cherokee Indian Police Department SWAT Team members, Jason Harley Kloepfer has reached a $10 million settlement with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Cherokee County, ending any chances of what was shaping up to be a difficult and complicated federal trial.

Many details of the settlement aren’t yet known, but according to a release from Cherokee County, $5 million of that sum will come from the Eastern Band and $5 million comes from the county. The county’s insurer will cover the majority of the $5 million that’s owed by the county, except for the $5,000 deductible.

Kloepfer was shot in the early morning hours of Dec. 13, 2022, after his neighbor called 911 alleging he was being belligerent and threatening.

“My neighbor about an hour ago started shooting off fireworks, screaming yelling he’s going to kill the whole neighborhood, yada yada, he’s discharging a firearm,” Floyd told dispatchers the night of Dec. 12. “I’ve been videoing all of this, but I was just gonna let it go. But I just heard his wife screaming ‘stop it,’ and then a bunch of shots went off and now I can’t hear her over there at all.”

Deputies who initially responded didn’t drive their patrol cars up to the house — instead they parked down the road without turning on their flashing lights, walked up to the property and began to “snoop around,” Kloepfer’s initial complaint in the civil suit says. They knocked on Kloepfer’s door several times but didn’t identify themselves. Nobody answered — the lights were off and the blinds were drawn, the initial civil complaint said.

Deputies stuck around and about 15 minutes later, then-head of Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigative Division Milton Lt. “Sport” Teasdale applied for a search warrant.

The search warrant was approved at 2:14 a.m., but since the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office didn’t have a SWAT team, they called up the Cherokee Indian Police Department for assistance.

The CIPD SWAT team deployed a robot to enter the home and record live video and audio so the operators outside could know what was going on. Kloepfer and his wife, Ali Mahler, were asleep. He woke up and grabbed the robot, opened the door and stood facing officers with his hands up, a robot in one and a cigarette in the other. Seconds later, three CIPD officers opened fire, discharging a total of 15 rounds. They barely missed Mahler but struck Kloepfer twice, causing serious injuries — injuries that were initially left untreated by the first officers who entered the home.

Initially Kloepfer was charged with communicating threats and resisting officers; however, a month-and-a-half after footage from a camera inside the home was publicly released on Jan. 18, 2023, those charges were dropped. District Attorney Welch subsequently recused herself from the case, saying in a March 27, 2023, letter to the criminal bureau chief for the N.C. Department of Justice that she believed she would be interviewed by the SBI as part of the ongoing investigation and would therefore become a witness. A special prosecutor was assigned to the case, but he declined to charge any officers.

On June 20, 2023, the civil suit was filed against a number of defendants, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and dozens of deputies.

In recent months, Kloepfer’s attorney, Ellis Boyle, filed documents related to motions that could have hampered the defendants’ case, including five sworn affidavits which basically serve to impeach the credibility of certain witnesses by saying they’ve lied, including one particularly damning statement from District Attorney Ashley Welch that indicated that Teasdale lied to her and a magistrate judge while seeking the search warrant and criminal charges against Kloepfer.

“Detective Teasdale told me that when Jason Kloepfer came to the door of his home, there was a verbal altercation between him and law enforcement and that Kloepfer had come to the door with a gun,” the affidavit reads.

A few weeks after the shooting, once Kloepfer made his home surveillance footage public, Welch watched video. It showed no indication of a hostage situation or a verbal altercation with law enforcement. When Kloepfer came to the door, he was unarmed and quiet, seemingly still shaking off the cobwebs of slumber. That’s when she moved to dismiss the charges that were initially filed against Kloepfer.

On April 1, Welch issued Teasdale a Giglio order. A Giglio order, known in police circles as “the career killer,” is issued by a district attorney when a law enforcement officer has compromised their credibility to the degree that their character could impeached. Basically, they can’t be trusted to testify during a trial.

Documents obtained through a public records request show that Teasdale was initially suspended with pay and resigned from the sheriff’s office on April 28. Notably, Teasdale had submitted paperwork that was even signed by Sheriff Dustin Smith for his resignation effective April 3, but a handwritten note at the top had the instructions “to not process this resignation at this time.”

Now that the settlement has been finalized, attorneys will notify the court within 45 days. In the meantime, Boyle, in a statement sent to Smoky Mountain News said Kloepfer and Mahler, both of whom he represents, can feel a sense of closure and justice.

“It has been a long time coming for my clients to finally get some resolution on the civil justice side,” the statement reads.