DALLAS — A Dallas County grand jury has declined to indict a former Dallas paramedic who kicked and hit an unarmed man while he was down.
The Dallas County DA's office confirmed Friday afternoon the grand jury declined to indict the man, 46-year-old Brad Alan Cox, on the felony charge of injury to a disabled person.
Cox was caught on camera kicking a homeless man in a video from 2019.
State records showed Cox had a license to be an emergency medical technician - paramedic (EMT-P). That license was suspended in November 2021.
The man Cox was kicking in the video was Kyle Vess. According to police public integrity documents of the incident, "Vess had a black eye to his right eye, bloody nose, multiple fractures to his face and a swollen right ankle.”
The incident was captured by a nearby surveillance camera. Officers used a Taser on Vess and eventually arrested him.
It happened in August 2019, when Cox, along with other firefighters, were responding to a grassfire on Lone Star Drive.
Cox said he believed Vess started the fire. His explanation can be heard on the body camera footage from sheriff’s deputies at the scene.
“He was going up the service road and he sat right here in front of the engine somewhere, so I got out to kick it out while it was small before it got big, and that’s when he got up and charged,” Cox said.
This was not the first time Cox had been accused of disciplinary issues.
In 2016, Cox and another firefighter were investigated for an incident involving another homeless man, Hirschell Fletcher.
Dallas police called paramedics to the scene. An officer could be heard on his dash camera video saying, “you have DFR coming. This guy has a head injury.”
But, according to court documents, when paramedics arrived, they "assumed [Fletcher] was drunk and began harassing and openly laughing at him as Fletcher sat on the sidewalk in pain.”
In the dash camera video obtained by WFAA, they can be heard laughing as Fletcher tries to spell his name in the background. It was used as evidence in the case.
