A town in Washington state will pay the parents of a teenage boy $15 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit they filed after he drowned during a town summer camp outing.
Darrell “DJ” McCutcheon, Jr., disappeared under water in Florence Lake on Anderson Island southwest of Seattle on July 15, 2022, according to Pierce County Court records.
Brett Rosen, an attorney for the McCutcheon family, told The Seattle Times this week that Steilacoom agreed to pay $15 million to settle their lawsuit in late April.
A camp employee had left 13-year-old DJ and other teenagers at the lake that day while he went to pick up another group of children and a co-worker at the ferry station nearby, court records show.
DJ, who had never swum in open water before and was not given a life jacket, was underwater for about six minutes before bystanders rescued him and began performing CPR.
He was flown to a hospital and died that day, court records said.
