North Carolina has agreed to pay $200,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Tyrone Mason, a 31-year-old Raleigh father who died after crashing his car on Capital Boulevard in October 2024 following a state trooper's hidden high-speed pursuit. The settlement closes out one chapter of a case that only came to light because Mason's mother, Henrietta Mason, refused to accept the initial explanation that her son died alone with no witnesses.
According to the News & Observer, U.S. District Judge James C. Dever approved the settlement agreement between the Mason family and former Trooper Garrett Macario on July 29. Mason crashed at about 2:30 a.m. on October 7, 2024, near Wake Forest Road, driving a 2018 black Chevrolet Malibu when he lost control of the vehicle. The lawsuit, filed by Henrietta Mason on behalf of her son's estate in North Carolina's federal eastern district, claimed Macario failed to render aid after the crash and did not provide contact or care to Mason, according to the findings later detailed in a report by Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman.
A Mother's Search for Answers
Raleigh police initially told Henrietta Mason that her son died in a single-car accident with no witnesses, according to INDY Week. Unsatisfied, she and her children began independently canvassing businesses near Capital Boulevard for surveillance footage and potential witnesses, sought help determining whether an officer had pursued her son, and questioned whether a state trooper was chasing him that night. She emailed the State Bureau of Investigation with her concerns on December 23, 2024, a step that eventually forced authorities to look beyond the solo-crash explanation.
One of those independent leads came from local resident James Jaime, who told the family he heard sirens, accelerating cars and a crash on the morning Mason died along Capital Boulevard. Jaime later gave a written statement to Raleigh police corroborating what the family suspected, and he described the impact as sounding like a house blowing up, according to Emancipate NC.
Bodycam Footage Reveals the Cover-Up
A Wake County judge ordered Raleigh police and the Highway Patrol to release crash-investigation videos to the public in May 2025. Henrietta Mason had initially been told by the Highway Patrol she could view the videos at its Blue Ridge Road office, but she instead watched the footage with her children in her living room on January 31, 2025. The released videos showed Macario turning on his lights at a gas station to pursue Mason, chasing him for about one mile before turning his lights back off.```
Freeman's report on the SBI investigation found that Mason accelerated to about 100 mph after Macario tried to stop him. Macario later told his supervisor, Sgt. Matthew Morrison, that he had turned on his lights to stop Mason for speeding, and Morrison, in turn, told Macario to conceal the attempted traffic stop. Macario said he turned off his lights because he believed continuing the chase would be unsafe, and he reported the crash to emergency communications afterward. Freeman said Macario initially denied involvement but later told investigators the truth, while a Highway Patrol supervisor admitted the trooper had tried to pull Mason over.
No Criminal Charges, but Career-Ending Fallout
Freeman announced in May 2025 that she would not pursue criminal charges against Macario or Morrison, explaining that although Macario's initial false statements were inexcusable, his later truthful admissions during the investigation prevented prosecutors from securing a conviction, according to WCNC. The decision drew sharp criticism from the family's legal team. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol fired both Macario and Morrison in June 2025 after the bodycam footage was released, about one month after Freeman released her report.
The fallout from the troopers' compromised credibility reached far beyond Mason's case. Freeman dismissed roughly 200 traffic and other cases involving Macario and Morrison in January 2025 due to credibility concerns, a wave of dismissals that prevented local prosecutors from pursuing active impaired-driving cases that had relied on the two troopers' statements, according to Axios Raleigh.
Settlement Terms and Ongoing Claims
The $200,000 settlement falls well below the $1,000,000 per-claimant cap on state agency negligence liability set by North Carolina's Tort Claims Act. Of the settlement, attorneys Bakari Sellers, Ben Crump and Sean Cecil will receive $73,000 in fees and $12,091 in expenses, while nearly $105,000 will be placed in a trust for an unnamed minor's health and education. The Mason family will receive the remaining funds.
Sellers, one of the family's attorneys, said the North Carolina Highway Patrol should enact policy changes in response to Mason's death. A separate claim against the Raleigh Police Department, alleging negligence in its initial investigation of the crash scene, is still proceeding through an administrative process, a step attorneys took alongside the federal lawsuit against Macario, per prior reporting from Hoodline's earlier coverage of the case.
A Corridor With a Troubling Record
Capital Boulevard has continued to see serious traffic incidents in the time since Mason's death, including a fatal multi-vehicle crash near Trawick Road last month that Hoodline also covered. The high-density commercial corridor connects downtown Raleigh to the northern suburbs and carries heavy traffic volume through the area where Mason crashed.
Mason's case also fits into a broader pattern flagged by state data. An internal 2021 Post-Chase Analysis by the North Carolina State Highway Patrol found that 27% of the 896 vehicle pursuits conducted that year violated agency policy, with 63% of all chases initiated over routine speeding or minor infractions, according to WRAL. High-speed pursuits statewide resulted in 29 deaths and 49 serious injuries over a five-year period, the outlet reported.
