It was the written testimony of an expert in emergency medicine and toxicology that a school resource officer injured years before breaking up a fight among middle school students didn’t intentionally overdose that helped sway a federal hearing officer to award $303,064 to the woman’s widow and their two children, according to plaintiff’s counsel.

Stewart Casper said he faced an uphill battle with both the Stamford Police Department and the U.S. Department of Justice to show that Marcia Stella’s death in February 2008 was linked to that 2003 fight and that she didn’t cause her own death.