The nation’s largest retailer will pay $750,000 to the family of a suspected shoplifter who suffocated as employees held him down in a parking lot outside a northeast Harris County store.

Stacy Clay Driver, 29, died Aug. 7, 2005, in a Wal-Mart parking lot as someone sat on him while he was face-down and handcuffed, said Brad Frye, an attorney for the family.

“One or more people were on his body and he couldn’t breathe,” Frye said Thursday. “This was a senseless, senseless death.”

The case went to mediation before being settled in March, he said.

An autopsy showed that Driver had methamphetamine in his system when he was chased into the parking lot by a “loss prevention” employee at the store in Atascocita, where he was wrestled to the hot pavement. He was suspected of exchanging stolen items to get $94 worth of store credit on a gift certificate, police said.

His death was ruled a homicide caused by asphyxia from neck and chest compression. The autopsy report listed a contributing factor as overheating with methamphetamine toxicity.

Frye said the methamphetamine may have contributed to Driver’s death, but didn’t cause it.

A Harris County grand jury in July 2006 declined to indict anyone in the case.

According to court documents, an initial sum of $550,000 will go to Driver’s wife, Wendy, their son, Ashton, and Driver’s father, H.C.  Driver.

The son also will receive payments from a trust, which will disburse $25,000 on his 25^th birthday, almost $70,000 on his 30^th and $100,000 on his 35^th birthday, court papers show.

Driver’s stepmother, Pat Driver, said the money “doesn’t bring him back, it doesn’t help the pain, it doesn’t end anything.”

She said Driver’s son will turn 2 in July.

At the time of his death, Driver was on probation for a theft case related to a similar gift‑card scam the previous year at a Wal-Mart in Polk County. He had signed an agreement to never enter another Wal-Mart store.

Wal-Mart’s Houston lawyer, John Ramirez, referred questions about the Driver lawsuit to company headquarters. Calls to that office were not returned Thursday.

Wal-Mart is commonly said in legal circles to be the most sued company in America and the second-most sued entity in the world, behind the U.S. government.

James Paulsen, a South Texas College of Law professor, said that would be hard to prove, but is believable simply because of the number of stores and employees the company has and the number of customers and transactions it deals with every day.