DALLAS — An attorney has released bodycam footage in hopes of helping the family of man who died while in custody at a Dallas hospital.
Attorney Geoff Henley represents the family of Kenneth Knotts, 41, who died in 2022 at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Henley presented nearly eight minutes of bodycam footage from November 29, 2022.
Henley said there are almost 20 additional unreleased video and audio recordings in the incident from different angles.
The footage starts with Knotts sitting on a hospital bed with his hands cuffed behind his back. He then gets off the bed to drink water from the hospital room sink.
In the video, UTSW police officers then begin to restrain Knotts and bring him back to the bed. According to a Dallas PD investigation report of the incident, the officers restrained Knotts after he tried to bring his handcuffs to the front of his body.
The police report further said UTSW officers had to keep restraining Knotts as he resisted on the bed. A DPD investigator over the incident noted in that report that officers had placed a second pair of cuffs on Knotts and were removing that pair when he started resisting.
The video released by his family's attorney shows Knotts face down on the hospital bed, at times shouting. Hospital staff can then be being brought into the room and helping restrain Knotts. The Dallas police report said the staff was holding Knotts down until they could bring in "soft restraints."
At this point in the video, Knotts is quiet. While staff members talk about restraining Knotts until the soft restraints came in, one staffer can be seen with her hand on his neck, appearing to check his pulse.
Someone in the room then tells the staff to "flip him over."
At this point in the footage, Knotts is laid on his back on the hospital bed. Hospital staff then surrounds him, and someone in the room yells, "No pulse."
Based on the Dallas PD report, a "crash cart" was then brought into the room, and the staff started giving Knotts chest compressions. One of the officers then took off one of Knotts' cuff off his wrist so he wasn't restrained anymore, per the police report.
The report said medical staff performed life-saving measures for 43 minutes before Knotts was formally pronounced dead.
At Tuesday's press conference, Knotts family attorney Henley claimed Knotts died when UTSW police officers were restraining him. Henley said Knotts' body was pressed against the edge of the bed, which interrupted his breathing and caused him to go unconscious before he died.
A 2023 Dallas County Medical Examiner's report ruled Knotts' death a homicide. According to Henley, Knotts' cause of death was determined to be "prone position and physical restraint."
A grand jury has since declined to indict any officers involved in this case, Henley said.
"The fact that they weren’t indicted doesn’t matter a hill of beans to me," Henley said at the press conference. "The video tells me the story."
Henley said Knotts' case was similar to the case of Tony Timpa, whose family he also represented. Timpa died in 2016 while in Dallas Police custody.
NOTE: The following video was uploaded in Feb. 2024
What happened before Kenneth Knotts' death?
According to his family's 2023 lawsuit against the University of Texas System, the incident leading to his death started when Knotts was confronted by police in Hutchins. The suit says he was traveling by car to North Texas from Austin with one of his kids when he caught a flat tire.
According to a Dallas Police report, Knotts was then seen on top of a SUV in a parking lot while holding his infant son in his arms. He allegedly refused to come down from the vehicle, claiming Austin Police officers were trying to kill him and that he needed his tire fixed.
The lawsuit said Knotts was taken to the UTSW Medical Center in Dallas after officials determined he was having a mental crisis.
It's not clear where Knotts' son was taken from this point forward.
UTSW police were later called to Knotts' hospital room because, according to the Dallas Police report, Knotts "was becoming 'antsy' and wanting to leave."
Both the family lawsuit and the DPD report say Knotts later ran from the hospital. He was eventually handcuffed at a commercial loading dock and taken back to his hospital room by hospital police, according to the police report.
According to the report, one of the UTSW officers said a taser was used while Knotts was being handcuffed, but it was "unsuccessful."
Officers then restrained Knotts after he allegedly tried to move his handcuffs to the front of his body, the report said. Knotts was then restrained by UTSW officers and hospital staff for at least five minutes before he was laid on his back in the bed and started receiving life saving measures, the police report said.