The mother of two young children who were in the back seat of their father's car when he was shot to death at an Austell apartment building in 2016 have reached a $6 million settlement with the complex's former owner.

The April 24 settlement came after the plaintiffs' lawyer filed a motion seeking sanctions because the onetime owner of West Place & West Parc Apartments destroyed old police and crime reports, security logs, emails from employees about crime on the premises and other records he asked be preserved.

“When we first got the case a couple of months after the shooting, we served the managers and owners, saying 'Don't destroy anything,'” said Rafi Law Firm principal Michael Rafi, who represents the children and estate of Larry Grigsby Jr.

A month after receiving the “request to preserve” letter, the owner sold the complex and destroyed “nearly everything we wanted, so discovery consisted of us getting almost nothing except for the police report (for the shooting), the 911 call logs of our shooting and the recordings of the 911 calls,” Rafi said.

The defense agreed to provide the combined $6 million in Great American Alliance Insurance coverage after Rafi filed a motion to strike the defendants' answer last month.

The defendants, West Place Holdings LLC and and LK Management LLC, were represented by Wayne Melnick and Jake Daly of Freeman Mathis & Gary. They did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

According to Rafi, court filings and other documents, Grigsby, 42, was visiting a tenant at the Six Flags Drive apartments with his children and was driving toward the exit when he was struck by a single shot to the head in the early hours of July 31, 2016.

Grigsby's SUV crashed into a tree and he died as his 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter looked on.

Cobb County police said Grigsby, a technician who built radiation-detection equipment, was an innocent victim. There was never an arrest in his murder.

The children's mother and administrator of Grigsby's estate, Tiffany Jenkins, sued the owner and manager of the complex in 2017, asserting claims for failure to keep the premises safe; allowing and maintaining a nuisance; failure to repair; and negligent hiring, training, supervision and retention.

Rafi did not send a presuit demand letter but, after the destruction of discoverable materials came to light, he filed his motion to strike and sent a demand letter on March 8.

The letter said that, when the owner of the defendant companies bought the complex years earlier, he fired the security company “because he did not want to pay them.” Two former managers for the defendant companies said they were instructed “not to call the police when crime happened,” it said.

It included statistics indicating that criminal incidents in the four years before Grigsby's murder included a homicide, eight gun-related crimes, nine robberies, two aggravated assaults, 24 assaults and batteries, and 10 burglaries.

The parties agreed to allow additional time for the defense to respond to the sanctions motion while they negotiated a settlement. Rafi said there was no mediation and that he demanded the limits of insurance coverage to avoid trial.

“We wanted all $6 million, and we got all $6 million,” he said. “If it hadn't settled, I think this was $25 million case.”

Rafi said he's sued the same property owner before, adding that case settled for $575,000.

Rafi said opposing counsel did a good job with the case they were handed.

“I thought the defense lawyers were extremely professional and handled this case with the care and respect it deserved in a case where two young children have lost their father,” Rafi said.