Suffolk County lawmakers have agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the family of Alan Weber, a 54-year-old East Northport man who was shot and killed by police in the basement of his own home while holding a sword in each hand. Legislator Chad Lennon announced the settlement at the conclusion of Thursday's meeting, and it now awaits final approval from a judge.
The shooting happened on October 10, 2023, after police received a 911 call just before 7 p.m. reporting that Weber was arguing with a neighbor and experiencing mental health issues, according to Newsday. A second call came in at 8:42 p.m. because Weber appeared to be breaking things and yelling, and officers arrived a few minutes later. Weber, who wore a fencing mask and had been an elite fencer in the 1990s, did not open the door when officers told him to, and an officer eventually kicked it open.
Before breaching the front door, officers saw Weber through a window holding a sledgehammer with blood on his face and shirt, according to state investigation findings reported by Patch. One officer discharged a Taser twice when Weber refused to put down the swords, but he was not subdued. Body-camera video released by state authorities, detailed by Police1, showed Weber leap over a box in the basement while advancing toward officers before he charged at them and officers fired their guns.
A Family's Complaint and a Long History of Crisis Calls
Weber's estate filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in December 2024, initially seeking $25 million. The complaint alleged there were no signs of emergency or criminal activity and that police entered Weber's home without consent. Weber had a long history of mental illness, and Suffolk County police had responded to his home on Mander Lane multiple times in the weeks before his death, including three separate emergency responses on the day of the shooting alone, according to reporting cited by NBC New York.
Attorney Nicholas Warywoda, who represented the Weber estate out of Melville, said the settlement provided some form of justice for the family. He said a lack of proper training allowed the situation to spiral out of control and that police failed to follow proper procedure. County attorney Chris Clayton said the county entered into the settlement without any admission of wrongdoing.
State Investigators Cleared Officers but Flagged Gaps
The New York Attorney General's Office of Special Investigation released a report on the Weber shooting in August 2025, concluding that a prosecutor would not be able to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that officers Sergio Vigario and Claudio Barrios acted in legal self-defense under New York law, and that no criminal charges would be filed against them. The office is legally mandated under New York Executive Law Section 70-b to assess every civilian death involving law enforcement, regardless of whether the officer was on or off duty or the deceased was armed or in custody, per the New York Attorney General's office.
Even while clearing the officers, investigators recommended crisis intervention training for all officers, noting it was not mandatory at the time, and said officers should call specially trained Emergency Service Officers for backup when a person in crisis poses no immediate threat. The office also recommended officers contact the DASH Intensive Crisis Stabilization Center hotline, operated by the Family Service League, when a person is not a threat to others, describing a collaborative approach that combines police experience with a mental health clinician's evaluation and engagement skills. Vigario and Barrios had completed crisis intervention training in 2022, the year before the shooting.
DASH and a County Trying to Divert Crisis Calls From Armed Officers
The Family Service League's DASH hub in Hauppauge operates as a 24/7 voluntary crisis facility offering walk-in care, mobile response teams, and a round-the-clock hotline at 631-952-3333. In October 2025, Suffolk County launched an initiative allowing 911 dispatchers to transfer crisis calls directly to Family Service League social workers, aiming to de-escalate situations without dispatching armed officers, according to WSHU. That built on a county police reform plan from March 2022 that used patrol-based videoconferencing to connect officers on scene with DASH clinicians.
Hoodline previously reported on the AG's findings on the shooting when the state's report was released last year.
Part of a Costly Pattern for Suffolk County
The Weber payout is not an isolated case. In March 2026, the Suffolk County Legislature's Ways and Means Committee approved a $3 million settlement for the estate of Walter Kellogg, a man struggling with mental illness who was fatally shot by a Suffolk police officer outside his Shirley home in December 2018. Suffolk County also reached three separate settlements totaling $725,000 in other matters, and lawmakers authorized nearly $3.9 million in police misconduct and liability settlements in the first quarter of 2026 alone, per Newsday's reporting on county legislative records.
Major settlements require approval from the Ways and Means Committee, and the pattern of multi-million-dollar payouts tied to mental health crisis calls has helped drive the county's push toward alternative response models like DASH and the social-worker call transfer program. For Weber's family, the settlement closes a federal case but leaves unresolved the broader debate over whether better training or different tactics might have kept the encounter from ending in gunfire.
