Family’s Tearful Quest Concludes : Courts: The city of Torrance agrees to pay $6.5 million for the death of a 19-year-old motorcyclist who was killed in a collision with an off-duty police officer.

Seven years after his youngest child’s death, tears still come all too easily to John Rastello.

On Thursday, the tears mingled with sighs of relief as Rastello and his attorneys announced a $6.5-million legal settlement with the city of Torrance, which had appealed a 1989 jury verdict. The agreement ends Rastello’s enduring attempts to prove that the Torrance Police Department conspired to cover up the facts surrounding his son’s death in a motorcycle accident.

“I’m just grateful it’s over,” Rastello, 68, said at a news conference called by his attorneys. Catching his breath in a sob, he wiped at his eyes apologetically, murmuring: “I swore I wasn’t going to do this . . . I’m sorry.”

Kelly C. Rastello, 19, the youngest of the family’s eight children, was killed on Aug. 31, 1984. Since then, the family has been battling to find out what really happened to him.

On the night of the accident, police told them Kelly was at fault because he was speeding and could not stop when a pickup truck, driven by off-duty Torrance Police Sgt. Rollo Green, turned left in front of him.

But the Rastellos delved into the accident themselves.

John Rastello and his wife, Geraldine, filed suit against the Torrance Police Department and officers at the scene, alleging that they conspired to conceal Green’s responsibility for the accident as part of a pattern of whitewashing police misconduct.

Six months before the case went to trial, Geraldine Rastello died of cancer. John Rastello, who said he believes his wife’s grief contributed to her death, pushed ahead with the seven-week trial in the summer of 1989.

Witnesses revealed that Green, who admitted drinking before the crash, was not given a field sobriety test until nearly an hour after the crash and was never given a blood-alcohol test; that a field supervisor used one of the department’s few untaped phone lines to report in from the scene of the accident, and that Green was not arrested, but instead was driven home by police.

Jurors concluded the cover-up followed a Police Department “custom and policy” of condoning misbehavior by officers. They awarded Rastello $5.5 million for his son’s death; the judge in the case later ordered the city to pay $2.1 million more in attorney fees.

No money was paid pending an appeal of the case, but interest had pushed the amount owed by the city to more than $9 million.

On Thursday, city and police officials insisted that their agreement to settle for $6.5 million is not an admission of guilt. “We feel disappointed that the appeal process can’t take place because we feel we would have been vindicated,” acting Police Chief Jim Popp said.

The settlement--the largest in the city’s history--does not exonerate Green from responsibility for a separate $380,000 jury award against him. Rastello’s attorneys said Green sought unsuccessfully to have the debt discharged in bankruptcy court. Green, still a member of the police force, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

While his attorneys said they plan to pursue payment from Green, Rastello said none of the money will replace his son. “All the money in the world is not going to bring my wife or my son back.”

Kelly Rastello was a delightful “gift” at the end of a line of five boys and three girls, his father said during a quiet moment after a press conference. An energetic young man, Kelly had been honored by the Los Angeles Police Department the year before his death for helping to save a neighbor from an assailant.

John Rastello said it did not occur to him at first to doubt what police told him about the accident.

“If my children got a ticket, they always got a second bawling out when they got home because (I believed) the police were always right,” said Rastello, who has 15 grandchildren. When his other children began to suspect that the police were withholding something, Rastello said he told them to drop the subject.

“I told them (that) Kelly had made a mistake, it was all his fault, because that’s what I believed,” Rastello said.

Rastello said he didn’t become suspicious until after the funeral, when a police watch commander snapped angrily at him when Rastello called to find out who the officers were who talked to the family on the night of the accident. Rastello had wanted to thank them.

He expressed frustration Thursday that the city failed to provide one key thing in its agreement to settle the case.

“Nobody has ever come forward and said, ‘This man was drunk that night and we made a mistake,’ ” he said, quietly starting to cry again. “It’s not right. It’s just not right.”