A few days after Kenneth Price last saw his son, he got a phone call saying one of his children had died.
Price hoped it was a mistake. He began calling his children, one by one. His two youngest sons answered the phone.
He called Kenneth Knotts, and the phone kept ringing.
“I knew it,” Price said, his voice trembling and tears streaming down his cheeks as he looked up at reporters at a news conference in his uptown attorney’s office on Wednesday. “He was my oldest son and they killed him.”
Knotts, 41, died in Southwest Texas police custody on Nov. 29, 2022, after being taken to a Dallas hospital for a mental evaluation. Relatives of Knotts traveled from Austin this week to speak out about the body camera footage, which was released last week by an attorney who filed a lawsuit last year alleging excessive force was used.
UT Southwestern has not released the footage despite multiple requests. Dallas Morning NewsThe video shows Knotts being handcuffed and forced into a hospital bed by officers as he screams for water and cries that he can’t breathe. He screams and squirms under the officers for several seconds before becoming unresponsive.
“You have no idea what the pain is,” Price told reporters on Wednesday. “I had to cremate my son. He sleeps every day in a box in the corner. I can’t help but get in bed and every time I get in bed I see my son.”
Body camera footage released shows police at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center restraining Knotts before he died in police custody at the hospital on Nov. 29, 2022.
UT Southwestern Medical Center did not immediately respond to multiple phone and email requests for comment Wednesday afternoon. The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is listed as representing the defendants, also did not respond to phone and email requests for comment.
news The paper first reported Mr Knotts’ death last year after spending months trying to work out how the man’s death while in police custody at hospital had not been made public.
The Dallas County Coroner’s Office initially determined his cause of death was undetermined. However, after reviewing body camera footage, the autopsy report was amended to state the manner of death was homicide. Coroners said he died of sudden cardiac arrest after officers physically restrained him in a “semi-prone position.”
A Dallas County grand jury in November declined to indict the officers involved. Internal police documents released by attorney Jeff Henry list the names of seven officers who had contact with Knotts at the hospital. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has not responded to multiple inquiries about whether the officers involved in Knotts’ death are still with the department.
Knotts fled the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas shortly before his death. According to a police report filed with the attorney general’s office after his death, UT Southwestern police pursued Knotts, who was suffering from delusions, and struggled to handcuff him and place him in a police vehicle.
Knotts’ four children had traveled to Dallas with their grandparents and other relatives, and her two oldest daughters, Kennedy Sanders, 12, and Kaylen Sanders, 9, sat in front of reporters and television cameras, staring at the floor.
As her daughter tried to speak, Kaylen wiped tears from Kennedy’s face.
“Why do people do things that they don’t want others to do to them?” Kennedy asked, staring at the floor. “I’ll never see him again. I thought he was the best person in my life and now he’s gone. He’s been taken from me.”
As she continued to comfort her crying sister, Kaylen said she wanted answers.
“Just giving him life in prison is nothing compared to what they did to him,” the 9-year-old said.
“My heart is broken”
Family members said Knotts had been traveling in a car from Austin before he came into contact with police, and according to the Hutchins incident report, he was approaching Dallas with his girlfriend and their two young sons when he became frustrated with a reckless driver and got a flat tire, his girlfriend told police.
According to the police report, he parked his car, stood on it with his toddler and told Hutchins police that Austin police were trying to kill him. The coroner’s report said he was “behaving erratically, being aggressive and spitting” at Hutchins police.
Police reportedly gave him medication to calm him down and transported him to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Police took him back to the hospital, where his condition worsened. Medical staff began “life-saving measures,” after which he reportedly died, without providing further details.
The autopsy report found Knotts had THC, a compound found in marijuana, in his system. He also had Narcan, a life-saving drug that reverses opioid overdoses. The report found no opioids in his system. Knotts was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 212 pounds.
Jocelyn Knotts previously news She didn’t know her son’s death had been ruled a homicide until she heard from a reporter. She said Wednesday that she wasn’t eating much and has been trying to control herself, but that she feels like she’s “not doing anything for Kenneth” if she carries on living the way she is.
“I don’t want to do too much to be happy, to enjoy life, or to do anything at all,” she says, “because they took away a part of my life, a part of my heart. My heart is broken, and words alone can’t heal it.”
The video was shared last week news “He was handcuffed and shirtless when he was taken to a hospital room. He complained that the handcuffs were painful and he repeatedly asked for water, but medical staff told him he was not cooperating.”
He jumped off the bed and tried to get a drink of water by putting his head under the tap, but at least three officers put him back in the bed. He cried out for more water. The officers turned him face down and appeared to apply additional restraints or adjust those already in place. The officers then held him down for several minutes while multiple medical staff stood around him.
According to a Dallas police report, officers said Knotts was wearing two pairs of handcuffs.
“They can’t tell me this was an accident,” Jocelyn Knotts said. “Where did the accident happen? Kenneth was driving into town with his family and that’s what it was. That’s what it was.”
The final moment of the video
Price noted that in the video, someone can be seen telling officers to turn Knotts over onto his back. The video shows Knotts motionless, face down on the bed with his lower body hanging from the floor. As medical staff debate whether to remove the restraints and handcuffs, a woman yells, “Lift him up!”
The footage shows medical staff pushing Knotts back into bed. “Kenneth?” one says. “Kenneth?”
A woman yelled that he had no pulse, medical staff rushed into the hallway, and several people yelled for Knotts to be released from his handcuffs.
Price told reporters on Wednesday that by that point it was too late.
“My son was dead,” Price said. “After the nurse said his pulse had stopped, I threw him on the table and tried to save him, but it was too late. It was over.”
