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District Attorney: No Charges Against Deputy In Death Of High Point Man

Activist Rev. Greg Drumwright (left) at a protest last summer in Graham. He has been an outspoken supporter of Fred Cox. PAUL GARBER/WFDD

A Davidson County detective won't face charges in connection with the shooting death of Fred Cox in High Point last year. 

The last minutes of Cox's life were marked by tragic circumstances: a High Point funeral attended by law enforcement because the deceased was the victim of a homicide, followed by a shootout in the street outside the church by two groups of people and a crowd desperately seeking cover.

It was during that chaotic scene that authorities say Cox, an 18-year-old Black man, was shot multiple times by Davidson County detective Michael Shane Hill. 

Cox's supporters say he was trying to get people to shelter. The Guilford County District Attorney's Office says there's no evidence that Cox was in a gang or that he fired a weapon that November day.

This week, the district attorney announced that the Davidson County investigator will not face charges in connection with Cox's death. That's after a grand jury decided there wasn't sufficient evidence to support either of the criminal charges presented by prosecutors — voluntary manslaughter or felony assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.

Cox's death has led to marches and calls for justice. Just this week, speakers at a rally in Greensboro urged people to continue to seek answers in the case.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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