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Editor's note, Aug. 2, 2019: This story originally published on Sept. 28, 2017. We are recirculating it in conjunction with the release earlier this week of Dallas policy body camera footage documenting Tony Timpa's death in August 2016 and the publication today of audio from a disciplinary hearing for two of the officers involved in the incident.
One muggy night in August 2016, Tony Timpa began to panic.
A beefy redhead who grew up in Rockwall, the 32-year-old executive had driven his Mercedes to a seedy stretch of West Mockingbird Lane, to the parking lot of a porn store.
From there, he called 911 and said he was afraid and needed help.
In less than an hour, he was dead.
For months, what happened to Timpa remained a mystery to his family and friends: A heart attack? A drug overdose? Murder?
His mother immediately started asking questions — and says she found herself stonewalled at every turn. An acquaintance of her son's contacted The Dallas Morning News seeking answers.
The people who know most about what happened to Timpa — the Dallas Police Department — won't say.
The News has spent more than a year examining Timpa's death and fighting for public records from the city of Dallas and Dallas County.
Both have repeatedly blocked the release of any information about the police call on Aug. 10, 2016, citing a "continuing investigation."
But evidence unearthed by The News, NBC5 and lawyers for his family shows that Timpa, unarmed and frightened, died in the custody of police officers — as they mocked him.
More than 100 people each year die in Texas during encounters with police, according to state data. Sometimes these deaths prompt a lot of scrutiny and even disciplinary action, as when an officer in Balch Springs shot an unarmed teenager leaving a party. Roy Oliver was fired and indicted on a murder charge this summer in the death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards; his trial is set for January.
But often, the police give out little or no information. And families question whether the little they learn from officials is accurate.
One North Texas couple spent two years fighting to find out how their 18-year-old son died during an arrest in Mesquite; police had failed to report they shocked the handcuffed teen in the testicles with a stun gun and stood on his head.
A month after Timpa’s death, his family learned something from state records that they found alarming: He was already handcuffed when Dallas police arrived.
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A quiet memorial
Photos from Timpa's memorial service capture a life of frame-worthy moments: jet skiing at the lake, driving a convertible, vacationing on the slopes or at the beach. He'd gotten engaged to a girlfriend in the year before his death.
In high school, he'd played center for the Rockwall Yellow Jackets varsity football team before attending Baylor University in Waco. He went to work for his father, Joe, at his trucking company, American National Logistics Inc.
Tony had married in his 20s, had a son and divorced. He moved to a shimmery glass high-rise near downtown Dallas and became director of operations at the trucking firm.
But there were dark days. Timpa battled addiction to alcohol and drugs, his mother said, and had been in and out of rehab.
According to police records, he was arrested in Garland in 2013 after he crashed his Chevy Tahoe. With bloodshot eyes and alcohol on his breath, he told a bystander: "I'm going to jail! Call my dad!"
He was convicted of DWI the following year, according to court records, and sentenced to 18 months' probation.
Yet he was a kid who grew up trusting and idolizing the police, his mother said.
One of his favorite childhood books was Peter Pat and the Policeman, she recalled.
The little picture book features a small boy with red hair and rosy cheeks who goes for a walk and gets lost. He remembers an important lesson: “Peter Pat knew policemen helped people, for his mother had told him so. He ran up to the policeman and cried, ‘Mr. Policeman, I’m lost! Will you show me the way home, please?’”
Searching for answers
When someone dies in a public place or in police custody, reporters often learn about it and tell the public. The media monitors records of police calls and listens in to scanner traffic; The News also reviews bookings into the county jails to see if there are major crimes of public interest that should be reported.
When Timpa died, there was no shooting to report. His call to 911 was dispatched as a person in need of assistance. There were no reports of a homicide at 1720 W. Mockingbird Lane the night he died. There was no booking report because he never made it to jail.
His mother, Vicki Timpa, said police initially told her that her son had a heart attack at a bar and died. Another officer told her that a policeman wandering down the street found Tony Timpa passed out by his car, and then he died.
Still another officer told her, “Tony called 911, got in an ambulance, waved to the cops and then he collapsed,” she said.
She didn’t believe any of it. She’s seen her son’s body at the morgue -- there was grass in his nose, she said, and bruises on his arms.
A woman at the morgue told Vicki: Call Ambulance 47.
So she called the Dallas Fire-Rescue crew who responded that night after the officers were on the scene. Whoever answered told her: “Ask the police what happened,” then hung up, she said.
Two weeks after her son’s death, Vicki Timpa filed the first request for public records from the Dallas Police Department, scrawling on the form: “I want to know what happened.”
At the same time, an anonymous tipster contacted The News, asking a reporter to look into the death of a man he only knew by first name: Tony.
It took more than a month of searching public records for The News to find Dallas police incident No. 192631-2016: "Sudden Death. Complainant died by unknown means."
The victim was listed as the same person who'd called the police: Anthony Alan Timpa.
A brief narrative
When someone dies during an interaction with law enforcement, the agency involved must file a brief report within 30 days to the Texas attorney general's office. That office maintains a database of the reports, but doesn't vet the information contained in them.
Upon learning Timpa's identity, The News obtained a copy of that report, which contained a brief narrative:
Timpa was with an unidentified man at New Fine Arts, the porn store. Witnesses said he became irrational and fled, believing someone was after him. He ran into traffic, so private security guards subdued and handcuffed him. Police swapped the handcuffs on Timpa and “they attempted to gain control of the subject.”
“Subject was placed in the ambulance, then he stopped breathing.”
On Sept. 21, 2016, The News filed three separate requests for public records: One seeking Dallas police incident reports and 911 calls related to Timpa's death, another requesting a copy of his autopsy, and the third asking for footage from the body cameras worn by police officers.
We also contacted his family. Timpa’s sister and father declined repeated requests for interviews.
But his mother said she was relieved that someone else was trying to find out what happened to her son, because she wasn’t getting answers.
In October 2016, Vicki Timpa says, she begged officials at the medical examiner's office for a copy of her son's autopsy report.
They told her that police were investigating the case, so they couldn't release the report.
But for the first time, an employee in the medical examiner's office told her the ruling on her son's cause of death: Homicide. Sudden cardiac death, due to the toxic effects of cocaine and the stress associated with physical restraint.
Vicki Timpa learned something else from that conversation, according to court filings: A police officer used his knee on her son's back to pin him to the ground for more than 13 minutes.
Those details were missing from the report to the attorney general.
She hired a lawyer.
A court case
Geoff Henley is a loud-talking attorney who wears cowboy boots with his suits and has an office in Uptown.
He will tell you that officers are rarely indicted for in-custody deaths, and excessive force lawsuits can be difficult to win. Courts recognize that arresting people who are combative or high on drugs is tough work, and that injuries and deaths can happen even when police follow procedure. To win an “excessive force” case, a victim must prove that an officer’s actions were a willful or unreasonable violation of someone’s constitutional rights.
Henley, too, asked the Police Department and the county medical examiner for records in Timpa's case. In November 2016, he filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal district court against the city and a security guard. The city refused to name the officers who were there when Timpa died, he said, so he had to sue them as John Does.
The Police Department denied all the records requests from The News, and Vicki Timpa, and her lawyer. It told the attorney general's office, which also rules on disputed records, that there was a continuing investigation into the incident.
Henley filed another lawsuit, against the city, still trying to get some documents that would explain what happened to Timpa.
After missing several deadlines and a court date, the city explained in court filings that the Dallas County district attorney’s office had recommended withholding all records until its investigation was closed.
The police turned the case over to the DA’s office in December. Prosecutors said in March of this year that a grand jury was expected to review the case within 120 days.
More than 180 days later, the case has still not gone before a grand jury, according to court records; prosecutors say they are still investigating it.
A slightly different story
Seven months after The News requested records from Dallas police, the attorney general's office forced the city to release one thing: a basic incident report containing the bare facts of Timpa's arrest.
The heavily redacted document tells a different story from the narrative the police gave the attorney general’s office. It said Timpa died at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
And in this version, Timpa’s behavior is described as “aggressive and combative in nature.”
That directly contradicts what Dallas police told the attorney general's office on Timpa's in-custody death report, which asked:"Did the deceased at any time, verbally threaten the officers? Resist being handcuffed or arrested? Escape or attempt to escape/flee custody? Physically attempt/assault officers?"
For each question, the answer on that state record was “no.”
'I hope I didn't kill him'
Vicki Timpa's lawyers finally got access to the crime-scene material in late April, including the 911 calls and body camera footage The News has been fighting for since September 2016.
The federal judge in the case allowed the city to submit the recordings under a protective order, so The News has not been able to review them.
But Henley and his staff spent weeks reviewing the 911 calls and witness statements taken by Dallas police, watching and logging the officer's body camera footage minute-by-minute in his office.
They suspected what the records revealed might be shocking, Henley said, but what they saw was "ghastly."
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What they saw was a radically different story than Dallas police initially revealed in the incident report and the custodial death report to the attorney general's office.
The lawyers' account in court filings of what they saw and heard is backed up by pleadings from another set of attorneys representing Timpa's father, who filed this summer to join the lawsuit.
From the porn store, Timpa called 911 and told a dispatcher he feared for his safety, that he suffered from anxiety and schizophrenia and was off his prescription medicine, according to the lawsuit. It also says he told the call taker he was unarmed.
A security guard followed Timpa out of the store and witnessed him run across Mockingbird Lane, in shorts and bare feet.
Others called 911 to report Timpa's erratic behavior.
Another security guard saw the commotion while driving by and stopped to help. That guard, Glenn Johnson, handcuffed Timpa, according to the lawsuit.
Timpa was on the ground near a bus-stop bench on Mockingbird not far from the porn store when Dallas police officers arrived.
Sgt. Kevin Mansell arrived first, followed by officers Dustin Dillard, who had been on the force just a year, and Danny Vasquez. Officers Domingo Rivera and Raymond Dominguez turned up within minutes.
Three of the officers wore body cameras, according to court filings. Dillard's, worn on his chest, shows the view above Tony's head and shoulders, Henley said. Vasquez's shows a wider angle of the scene.
According to the camera time stamp, it was 10:40 p.m. when Dillard and Vasquez approached Timpa, who was handcuffed, arms behind his back, and sitting on the ground. Vasquez's camera reportedly records Timpa saying, "You're going to kill me."
Lawyers for the police say in filings that it's unclear whether Timpa was talking about the officers in that moment.
Dillard and the other officers rolled Timpa face-down, onto his chest in the grass, telling him to calm down. They swapped the security guard's handcuffs for a city-issued pair.
One of the officers also placed flex cuffs (restraints similar to nylon zip ties) around Timpa's ankles.
The police asked what he was on. Timpa answered: Coke. "I know it's illegal, but I only took a little bit."
Vasquez used his knee to pin Timpa's left shoulder for more than two minutes, the family's lawsuit says. Dillard put his knee in the center of Timpa's shoulder blades, pinning him with his body weight.
According to the lawsuit, Johnson, the private security guard, pulled back on Timpa's legs. (Johnson did not respond to the lawsuit or requests for comment from The News.)
Keeping someone face-down and bound at the arms and legs is known as the "prone position," a method of restraint that is controversial in policing. Several studies have shown it may increase the risk for asphyxiation and sudden death.
Two body camera angles show Dillard's knee remained in Timpa's back for at least 14 minutes and 7 seconds, as Timpa repeatedly begged: "Don't hurt me."
Officers riffled through Timpa's wallet; the family's lawsuit describes them as joking about his membership in a yacht club and fancy fitness center, "He's got a 'mur-ka-deeze' somewhere," Vasquez joked, referring to Timpa's Mercedes parked nearby.
At some point, according to the lawsuit, body camera footage records one of the officers saying: "This isn't normal crazy, he took something."
Another remarks: "His nose is buried."
After 11 minutes with the officers holding him down, Timpa lost consciousness, the camera footage shows. The police quipped about waking Timpa up for school and mimicked his incoherent speech.
Three-and-a-half minutes after Timpa fell unconscious, one of the body cameras recorded Dillard saying: “I hope I didn’t kill him.”
The lawsuit alleges that about 17 minutes into the video, one of the emergency medical workers told the sergeant, “He’s dead.”
Mansell had been away from the other officers, speaking to Timpa’s stepmother on the phone about his medications. The sergeant abruptly ended that phone call, walked over to Vasquez and said: “What the f---?”
Vasquez shut off his body camera, which he admits in court filings. That may have been a violation of Dallas police rules.
Two other officers’ body cameras remained on.
The footage shows officers inside the ambulance attempting CPR for several minutes, according to the lawsuit. When they emerged, someone declared Timpa dead at the scene.
Even though at least two people at the scene had noted Timpa was dead by this point, they took him to Parkland anyway.
The officers' response
Dallas police, the city attorney’s office and the officers involved in Timpa’s death declined comment for this article, citing the pending lawsuit.
Lawyers for the officers have denied the allegations of misconduct in court filings and argued that Timpa “suffered sudden cardiac death while in police custody.” They say the officers have “qualified immunity,” which would allow them to get the lawsuit dismissed unless their actions clearly violate established law.
The officers do not dispute many of the basic facts detailed in the Timpa family’s lawsuit, according to their court filings. They say that they did not know Timpa was unarmed.
But they say that “early in the encounter, Timpa violently kicked and rolled while he was perilously close to the roadway of Mockingbird Lane.”
The level of force they used was necessary to keep him from rolling into the roadway, the officers say. They deny violating Timpa’s constitutional rights.
They say that Timpa kicked an officer — but also that he was disoriented and asked for help.
In their court filings, they report that he received an injection in the shoulder from paramedics, after which he stopped screaming and made “a snoring sound.” The officers admit they joked about waking him up.
None of the Dallas police officers who responded to Timpa’s 911 call that night in August 2016 have been disciplined in connection with his death, according to department records.
Dallas County First Assistant District Attorney Mike Snipes told The News in an emailed statement: "Our investigation of the case revealed some concerns with the cause of Mr. Timpa's death," causing a delay in the grand jury process.
The district attorney’s office contacted Timpa’s family, Snipes wrote, and his father provided “additional case information,” requiring the DA’s office to consult with an outside forensic pathologist.
The case will probably be presented to the grand jury by the end of the year, he said.
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Avoiding scrutiny?
The discrepancy between the Police Department's accounts and what the body camera footage reportedly shows is why the public should be allowed to see it, Henley said in an interview.
"The way the police portray the narrative is like, 'Oh, Ok, well we did the best we could and then he died,'" Henley said. "But what you don't see is this protracted engagement where Dillard has Tony subdued with his knee in his back while handcuffed."
The officers' jokes, the amount of time that elapses before anyone notices Timpa is unconscious or tries to revive him — those details were sanitized from the incident report and the narrative submitted to the attorney general, Henley said.
"DPD has exonerated these officers, they are absolutely not going to discipline them," he said. "They just don't want any scrutiny."
The Timpa family's lawsuit could end up getting delayed for several months, however, because Dillard sought an indefinite stay this summer, after he was called to active duty in the Air Force Reserve.
Vicki Timpa's grief is still raw. Her son grew up believing the story of Peter Pat, she said. If you're lost or need help, call the police.
Dallas police could have immediately taken Tony to Parkland, only a mile away, while he was still breathing. They could have taken him to jail, or the drunk tank. They could have taken him home.
"But he called the police," she said. "And they killed him."
NBC5 Reporter Cory Smith contributed to this article.
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