Tarrant County sheriff offers explanation about missing video in jail death
Security camera footage in the case file of a Tarrant County jail death investigation is not missing “critical video evidence,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in a written statement Wednesday.
Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Robbie Hoy did not answer phone calls or respond to emails to clarify if he meant there is no footage missing at all or if no “critical” footage is missing.
A Star-Telegram investigation from April found that three minutes are missing from security camera footage the Sheriff’s Office sent to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards as part of its investigation into the death of Chasity Bonner in the Tarrant County jail last year. The lapse immediately precedes the medical emergency that led to Bonner’s death.
Bonner, 35, died of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease on May 27, 2024, according to the medical examiner’s autopsy report. Her family has questioned the ruling and accused the Sheriff’s Office of “stalling” to release information in her case to run out the two-year statute of limitations on wrongful death lawsuits.
The jail commission confirmed this month that the three minutes were missing and requested the Sheriff’s Office produce the missing footage. Brandon Wood, the jail commission’s executive director, also asked the Sheriff’s Office to explain the procedures in place that led to their omission from the case file turned over to the state agency.
Wood reiterated on Wednesday that the three minutes were not submitted to the jail commission for review. He did not immediately respond to a follow-up email asking if the commission’s request for the missing footage is still pending.
The jail commission is the state agency that reviews custody death investigations and monitors jail conditions to ensure that they adhere to minimum standards.
Hoy said in a prepared statement that while mounted security cameras are not required in the general population pod where Bonner was housed, the department “goes above and beyond expectations” by installing them in the facility.
“The entire incident is recorded from the moment the reporting inmate exited the cell to tell the detention office[r] that her cellmate needed medical assistance,” Hoy said. “This aligns with other evidence.”
Among the footage are videos from two cameras mounted in the pod in which Bonner was housed. This footage is broken into two periods of time. The first period runs from 10:59 p.m. the night of May 26, 2024, to 10:55 a.m. the next morning.
The next period then begins one second before 10:58 a.m. Five seconds into the footage, Bonner’s cellmate can be seen leaving the cell and walking to the guard station. A jailer returns to the cell with her, then orders the other incarcerated women to go to their cells as she calls for emergency services.
The lapse was due to “a time sync issue between the antiquated analog camera and recording system,” Hoy said in the statement.
“The 12-hour recordings that are made prior to jail incidents are used to confirm checks were not missed and they align with other check processes,” he said. “No critical information is missing or been withheld and reports otherwise is inaccurate and misleading.”
He did not respond to phone calls and emails containing follow-up questions about what he meant by “critical” video evidence and whether the Sheriff’s Office believes timestamps on the video to be inaccurate.
Many of the women in the footage are in different areas of the pod in the first frame of the second segment from where they are in the last frame of the first period, indicating that some of the footage is missing.
This story was originally published May 21, 2025 at 4:36 PM.
