From [HERE] and [HERE] The parents of a Hispanic teenager who died in police custody in eastern Pennsylvania have settled a lawsuit alleging officers beat their son to death. The federal complaint says Shenandoah police in 2004 beat 18-year-old David Vega to death and then hung his body in a holding cell to make it look like a suicide.

A judge dismissed the case Tuesday, citing a settlement. Terms were not disclosed. Lawyers did not immediately return requests for comment late Friday. The lawsuit named as defendants the borough, police Chief Matthew Nestor (in photo) and Capt. Jamie Gennarini. The officers denied wrongdoing. Nestor was convicted last year of falsifying a police report in a separate racially charged case involving the death of a Mexican immigrant.

Vega was a high school student on Nov. 28, 2004, when he and his younger brother fell into a heated verbal argument on their porch. Hearing the commotion, neighbors began stepping from their homes, one of whom called police. Two officers arrived and David began mouthing off. He was arrested. Two hours later he was dead. Police told his parents that he’d hanged himself in his cell. “That’s bullshit,” says Carlos, a former chef who was disabled in a 2000 car wreck. “David was going to college. He had a girlfriend. He had everything to live for. They beat him until he died.”

David didn’t have a shirt on when he was arrested. “There are 20 people who say he didn’t have a bruise on him when they cuffed him,” Carlos said. But when Carlos viewed the body, David was covered with bruises. The Schuylkill County coroner accepted Shenandoah police chief Matthew Nestor’s explanation that the bruises resulted from David’s resisting arrest. According to the lawsuit, a second autopsy confirmed David “suffered extensive, massive injuries consistent with a profound beating… The defendant did not die of hanging.”