Yale University in New Haven, Conn., has settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Annie Le, a graduate student who was killed in a research laboratory in 2009 by a co-worker.
The Hartford Courant reports that the lawsuit, filed in 2011 by Le's mother, Vivian Van Le, was supposed to go to trial last month, but was postponed. The case was withdrawn last week after the two sides reached a settlement. The Associated Press, citing probate court documents it obtained Tuesday, said the case was settled for $3 million.
Annie Le was slain by Raymond Clark III, a lab technician at the Yale Animal Research Center where Le also worked as a third-year doctoral student in pharmacology.
Clark plead guilty to murder in 2011 and is serving a 44-year prison sentence.
Le, 24 at the time, was reported missing on Sept. 8, 2009. The lawsuit alleged that school officials "did not investigate her absence in earnest until the following morning." For days, local and state investigators and the FBI searched the basement of the Yale Animal Research Center, a research building at the Yale School of Medicine complex where Le was last seen alive.
Her body was discovered stuffed inside a wall in a basement locker room four days after she disappeared.
The lawsuit had contended that Yale knew or should have known that Clark posed a potential threat to the safety of Le. the suit said that Clark "previously demonstrated aggressive behavior and a violent propensity towards women."
