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A Machete Drawn, Did A North Texas Deputy Do Enough?

July 6, 2015 / 10:05 PM CDT / CBS Texas

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DALLAS (CBS11 I-TEAM) - Abygale Ramirez was only 8-years-old when she last talked to her father.

"It was weird because in the night I'd talked to him. Then the next morning, he was just gone," she told CBS 11's I-Team, her eyes beginning to water.

"I don't understand why…"

She's not the only one asking that question.

Triggered by an I-Team investigation, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department has re-opened an internal affairs investigation into whether a deputy, working an off-duty security job, did enough to stop a fight before it escalated into the killing of James Ramirez.

The focus of the investigation: Whether or not Deputy Warren Glaude saw the assailant, Stefon Brantley, threaten Ramirez with a machete just minutes before the killing.

"It's a police officer's responsibility to take action if he witnesses a crime in progress," said Det. Raul Reyna, spokesman for the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, where Glaude works as a court bailiff.

"If they find out that he actually did see a weapon, and he said that he didn't originally, then of course we have a problem there," Reyna told the I-Team.

Glaude was initially cleared by the sheriff's department of not doing enough to stop the fight, before it turned deadly.

But Reyna acknowledged that the department never questioned the attacker, Brantley, or read court testimony found by the I-Team, detailing what Glaude and two other off-duty officers saw and heard the night of the killing, on June 24, 2012.

"In light of the information that was brought to us by you guys …we have decided to re-open the case," Reyna told the I-Team's senior investigative reporter, Ginger Allen.

A heated argument between Brantley and Ramirez first began in a parking garage, adjacent to the Thrive Nightclub in downtown Dallas, at which time Brantley, in a jailhouse interview, told the I-Team he pulled a machete.

Reyna said Glaude would not be available for an interview because of the pending IAD investigation. Court testimony quotes him as saying, "the passenger, when he was getting in the van, he was saying, 'Hey man, that guy has a sword.' But I didn't see anything …"

Brantley gave the I-Team a different account of what happened that night.

"There was a sheriff …I remember the uniform …I can see it today in my head …that saw me with the machete in my hand and said, 'Hey, put that up!'"

"So I thought I was about to get arrested," he continued. "If I'd been arrested …if the man James Ramirez had been arrested …there would have been no murder case that night."

Instead, both men were allowed to leave in their separate vehicles, and the fight spilled into the streets, several blocks away, where Brantley fatally shot Ramirez.
Brantley told the I-Team he acted in self-defense after Ramirez threatened him with beer bottles.

A jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to 35 years in prison – later dropped to manslaughter and 20 years behind bars after an appeals hearing.

"This all could have been prevented," said Nelda Ramirez, the victim's mother. "He was a good son. No mother deserves this …to get that call," she said.
Hours before his death, Ramirez called his only child, telling her good night.

"It was like 9 o'clock. The last words I said to him was, 'I love you,'" said Abygale, now 11.

For her, questions remain, especially for the man who took her father.

"Why did he have to do that," she said, her eyes again starting to water, before she repeats herself, "Why did he do that?"

If you want to reach CBS 11′s Senior Investigative Producer Jack Douglas Jr., you can email him at jdouglas@cbs.com. If you want to reach CBS 11′s Investigative reporter Ginger Allen, you can email her at gingera@ktvt.com.