Police said he had been setting grass fires on the Interstate 30 frontage road in West Dallas. After the incident, Vess was charged at the scene with assaulting a public servant. Cox, however, has remained employed by the fire department until last week, when he was placed on leave after questions from The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Observer published the video. The News found that despite concerns from law enforcement officers who were at the scene, Dallas Fire-Rescue never conducted an internal affairs investigation and the public integrity unit quietly cleared Cox.
Now, the district attorney says he would have explored an indictment, but failed to do so because his office did not conduct a thorough investigation. Police Detective Lee Allen, who found Cox did not commit a crime, said he stands by his findings. Dallas Fire-Rescue declined to answer questions from The News about Cox and his record with the department. Fire department officials also refused to talk about protocols for handling scenes before police arrive and also about their training on use of force by paramedics.
The complete footage, which the city has not publicly released, shows that Vess initiated a fight with Cox, according to the detective who saw the video and cleared the paramedic.
The footage also reveals that Cox kicked Vess twice while he was on the ground — once in the unreleased video and again after police arrived and captured the second kick on their body cameras, according to the detective and lawyer. In response, Creuzot then asked police for the same video. Creuzot said if his office had seen the footage earlier, he might have pursued a possible criminal charge against Cox in Police said they would provide the video, but never did so, he said.
The Public Integrity Unit detective chalked it up to a technology problem. He believes prosecutors received the video in , but they were using the wrong type of video player. He later discovered the original footage can only be played with a certain type of software. When The News requested the video, the city only released six seconds of footage. The statute of limitations has expired for filing charges of assault or official oppression, leaving no other avenues for prosecution, Creuzot said.
But he thinks Cox should have been fired, especially when considering his disciplinary history before the kick. Before joining the department, he was arrested on suspicion of assault at a birthday party. Cox told a polygraph examiner during his application process that police believed he was the one who caused the assault, but he was never charged. In three other instances after he was hired in , Cox was reprimanded for refusing to provide medical treatment to patients.
In one of those cases, the fire department determined he failed to properly assess and transport a patient during an emergency in February He was suspended from one shift without pay. Cox and another paramedic, Kyle Clark, were called to help Hirschell Fletcher , who had been robbed and assaulted. Dallas police body camera videos show Clark and Cox at the scene.
Nevertheless, Clark and Cox cleared Fletcher to ride with police to the county jail, instead of taking him to a hospital. Fletcher was later found brain dead at the jail and died from his injury.
Cox and Clark falsely wrote in their reports that police took Fletcher away before they arrived, according to felony indictments against them for tampering with a government record. They were allowed to plead to a misdemeanor in exchange for deferred adjudication, which allows a person to avoid a conviction if he successfully completes probation.
Cox started his probation in April , less than four months before he encountered Vess. Cox completed his probation last year. Vess has struggled with a disorder that causes hallucinations and other symptoms similar to schizophrenia for most of his life. Before the incident with Cox, he used to manage it with medication and enjoyed scuba diving and welding projects with his dad, Kevin Vess.
But his mental illness worsened as he grew older and Vess made attempts to kill himself, said his father and his mother, LaNae Vess. Vess was taken by helicopter to Parkland Hospital, where the surgeon warned his parents he might not make it. He survived, but was left with a plate and screws inside his head, his parents said. After his injury, Vess started getting into legal trouble. His parents believe he became agitated only after he had stopped taking his medications.
Later that year, in September, Vess was charged with misdemeanor assault after a fight with a former roommate. In October , Vess was convicted of felony animal cruelty in Ellis County. His girlfriend told police that Vess choked his pet cat during an argument, according to court records. His conviction prohibits him from having weapons. The City of Fort Worth adopted a tax rate that will raise more taxes for maintenance and operations than last year's tax rate.
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