Suge Knight Agrees to $1.5 Million Settlement in Civil Hit-and-Run Murder Case

Photo Credit: Suge Knight by Nick Leisure / CC by 2.0

Suge Knight has agreed to a $1.5 million settlement to the family of Terry Carter, the man he ran over and killed in a 2015 hit-and-run.On Tuesday, Suge Knight appeared in court via video and agreed to a $1.5 million settlement in his wrongful death suit. The wife and daughters of Terry Carter, the man Knight ran over and killed with his truck in 2015, will each receive $500,000.

The settlement prevents a retrial on claims made by Carter’s family, which would have led to jury selection beginning on April 30 had he not agreed to settle. Knight is currently serving a 28-year-sentence at the Richard Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego and won’t be eligible for parole until October 2034. But he would have been forced to go on trial anyway—even without his lawyer, David Kenner, who has been trying to exit the case due to a conflict with Suge Knight.

Knight provided a statement to Rolling Stone about the incident, explaining he had gotten into an altercation in a restaurant parking lot that night. The altercation escalated when Knight ran over Carter and another man before fleeing the scene. Carter died within an hour of the incident, while the other man suffered two broken ankles and a head laceration.

“Terry was a friend of mine. It definitely wasn’t done intentionally. It wasn’t done to bring harm to him,” said Knight. “One of the reasons I settled [is] I got respect for Terry, so that means I’ve got respect for his family.” He continued: “I didn’t want to put the family through more pain. It’s not that I did anything wrong. I never would have. But I do owe the family an apology because of this thing they had to go through.”“It’s hard living without [Terry] when I lived all those many years with him,” said Carter’s widow. “It’s been very, very difficult. I’ve been in pain ever since January 29, 2015; I haven’t had a good day—not one good day.”

She added: “I’m not happy with the outcome of it, at all, but I don’t want to give him another opportunity to put on a clown show and act like a bitch. Maybe somebody will shank him in jail.”