Academy Sports + Outdoors and the families of the victims murdered by Todd Kohlhepp came to a settlement agreement.
Academy will award $2.5 million to the three victims’ estates, leaving each with over $830,000, minus attorney fees.
In 2019, family members of the deceased—Johnny Coxie, his wife Meghan Leigh Coxie, and Charles David Carver—filed legal action against Academy, claiming the company was negligent in selling guns that led to their murders despite “red flags.” They were found dead on Todd Kohlhepp’s property in Woodruff, SC, in 2016.
The lawsuit asserted that between 2012 and 2016, Dustan Lawson purchased firearms from Academy’s retail stores in Greenville and Spartanburg, SC counties. Lawson, in turn, gave the guns to Kohlhepp, who was legally barred from owning a gun after a 1987 rape conviction in Arizona. Kohlhepp used the firearms Lawson purchased for him at Academy to kill Carver, Johnny and Meghan Coxie.
Lawson later pleaded guilty to 36 federal firearms charges for buying guns and silencers for Kohlhepp.
Academy Sports filed a motion to seal details of the settlement; however, South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Mark Hayes denied the motion.
Todd Kohlhepp appears in court on May 26, 2017, in Spartanburg, SC. Photo courtesy Post & Courier
