Photo courtesy of Stonehill Athletics
By Desmond Bernal
It was just a normal college weekend for two friends catching up after a football game in October of 2010. Brandon Cox was playing for his hometown college, Stonehill, football’s team against Pace University in New York. His childhood friend, Danroy “DJ” Henry, was playing for Pace and the two competed against each other during homecoming weekend.
“After the game, even though we were competing on the field against each other, it was like we hadn’t missed a beat, it was as if we were playing on the same team because it didn’t matter to us in life, we were always on the same team,” Cox recalled. “We always wanted each other to strive to win.”
After the game, the two Easton, Massachusetts friends went out.
“It was a normal night, just like many of you have had at college. He was introducing me to his friends. Some people I’ve met before, some I hadn’t,” Cox said.
DJ and Cox along with some of DJ’s friends decided to go to a local bar that night.
“We were having a good evening, having a good time, interacting with people. He was getting to show me how things were run there, and it was a good night,” Cox said.
And then it all changed, Cox told roughly 263 attendees at a Zoom event sponsored by Stonehill’s Athletics Task Force to Address Racial Injustice on Oct. 17. By the end of the night, his best friend would be killed, and he would be wounded by a police officer.
According to several accounts, the police officer jumped on the hood of Henry’s vehicle as the college students were driving towards the parking lot exit of the bar, and the officer then opened fire into the windshield of the vehicle.
“Something that you live with every day, something that you can’t unsee, something that you can never get over,” Cox told attendees.
The shooting occurred after the two friends left the bar after learning a fight broke out in the bar involving other people.
“The owner of the establishment said, ‘hey it is time to go’ and DJ and I proceeded to his vehicle,” Cox said.
DJ and Cox were parked in the fire lane as they waited for a couple more friends they went to the bar with that night.
“After a while, he [DJ] went to go try to find some of our friends that we couldn’t find. He got back into the car and at that time, a police officer came up to the car and motioned to us to move along, to get out of the fire lane, you know we were blocking a fire lane, we could understand,” Cox said.
As they were pulling off slowly, Cox said a “dark figure” appeared to run in front of the car with what appeared to be a gun raised.
Cox said at the time it was dark out and it was difficult to tell the figure was a police officer.
“He wasn’t wearing a typical uniform, you couldn’t really tell he was a police officer,” he said.
Cox said that at that moment the police officer began firing into the vehicle and that he ducked down to avoid the bullets, then everything suddenly felt still.
Cox would hear his friend who he grew up with, his friend who he had been through so many experiences with, and his friend who he played a football game against, say his final words, “They shot me, they shot me, I can’t believe they shot me.”
Cox said that after DJ was fired upon, he was ripped out of the car and handcuffed.
Desmond Hinds, a friend of DJ and present at the Zoom event, was in the backseat behind DJ during that night, Cox recalled.
“They [the police] saw him and DJ and ripped both of them out of the car. And at that point our friend that was in the back, sustained some injuries from them ripping him out of the car, slamming his head against the ground causing him to have a concussion. DJ was taken out of the car, slammed to the ground, and handcuffed,” Cox said.
Cox went to seek medical attention on his arm, which he described as the flesh had been ripped off his arm. When he was met by an officer, the officer demanded him to get on the ground and then proceeded to handcuff and throw Cox into the back of a police cruiser.
Cox said he remembers seeing his friend, DJ, on the ground handcuffed behind his back gasping for air.
“To see your friend there, that you know that has been shot, who you heard explain that he has been shot; to be on the ground with no medical attention, nobody around him, just on the ground struggling for life,” Cox said.
He came home, and he was bombarded by news coverage and vans surrounding his home. Cox decided to go back to Stonehill because he could use the campus as an attempt to escape all the coverage.
“I took solace in the fact that I was in college at the time, I was at Stonehill. And I could go back on campus and those news vans could not follow me there,” Cox said.
Cox said he took refuge in his dorm room, where he would not leave his room for a couple of days.
Cox said he was great enough to have friends to bring him things and stop by to check on him, but he still could not muster up the strength to leave his room.
Cox said in the coming days he took to grieve and process, he realized the gravity of what happened that night could be twisted within the first few days of the news reports. “The false narrative of you know, a drunk college kid trying to run down the police, or oh a police officer was in fear of his life and others lives,” Cox said.
He said that these narratives in the media not only shaped Cox’s image in the public eye but also the eye of many of his fellow students on campus.
Cox had noticed that people started to look at him differently and it was difficult to understand.
“I finally leave my room to go to the cafeteria and get something to eat. The looks from my fellow classmates, some people that I knew, others who I didn’t know very well, but knew who I was because of what happened,” Cox said. “To see the looks people gave me and the fear I could see in their eyes or the doubt they had at that moment, it is something hard to describe.”
10 years later, Cox said many classmates have contacted him apologizing for judging him at that moment and not taking the time to hear his side of the story.
Cox urged attendees to combat this by doing their research when these narratives come out to decipher what is true.
“I encourage people to go forth and do the research not just take what that first news story says at face value and run with it - so you got to hold and reserve judgment until you’ve really seen all the documents, you’ve seen all the facts, you’ve really heard all sides of that story,” Cox said.
Cox made it clear to the attendees on Zoom that society needs to continue to educate themselves on these situations and have conversations about them.
“These things do not just go away just when you stop seeing them on your Instagram when you stop seeing things happen every day. This is something DJ’s family has to live with every single day,” Cox said.
Cox also said that when having these conversations about racial injustice that there needs to be a level of honesty and should avoid sugar-coating issues.
"If we don’t talk about these things and we try to cover those things up and don’t talk about these things, and don’t face these things head-on then we are never going to solve anything," Cox said.
Today, Cox is an educator. He works as an Academic Coordinator for Wellesley’s Public School’s Elementary METCO program. Instead of taking the summer, Cox runs a summer program called Sunset Point Camp located in Hull, MA.
“I run a non-profit camp where we take inner-city kids to our campsite and we give them experiences they might not otherwise have in the city; things that are not always accessible in the city,” Cox said.
As an educator, Cox looks to use education as a tool to teach children to understand the power of their voice and the power they have to make a better future.
“I’ve been an educator since I have graduated, I believe education is the key. We need to be educated on these matters and we need to teach people, what is going on in the world,” Cox said
This was Cox’s first year telling his story to the campus and Cox wants to turn his story into a positive.
“What I try to do is take what happened to me and make something good come out, hence why I take all the time in the world I can to working with children that is what I do in my regular career,” Cox said.
Cox is trying to make sure that DJ’s story is not forgotten, and he does this by giving back to his community.
“I try to give back to my community and also make sure that DJ’s story is not lost and people realize that we still have a lot of work to do, but it is something I truly believe in and truly believe we need to keep fighting for,” Cox said.
Cox talked about the DJ Dream Fund, a fund that has been created by DJ’s family in his name that helps children participate in sports and different school activities.
“It is a charity that helps kids actualize their potential, and something that was near and dear to me and DJ is sports, something that we always loved since we were very young. That is what the DJFund among many other things looks to do is to give children the chance to participate in things that they otherwise might not have,” Cox said.
After many years of federal and civil suits, officer Aaron Hess that killed DJ and injured Cox that night has still not been charged.
Initial statements said that another officer fired at Henry’s vehicle that night. Cox said that it has been proven in court that those statements were not true.
It was not until a civil case, Cox said that the family was able to get information that Officer Ronald Beckley said in a deposition back in 2012 that he fired at Hess, and did not know Hess was a police officer because he perceived him as “the aggressor.”
“For me getting that out there was more important than any monetary value because now it is on court document that this officer, Officer Beckley, fired at Officer Hess because he saw him as a threat,” Cox said.
Cox, the Henry family, and the fund are using this information to push to get the case reopened and have launched a petition.
Cox asked attendees to go to the DJ Dream Fund at djdreamfund.org to learn more about DJ's story and sign the petition.
“We need a full-court press right now of pressers saying that we are still here, we still want, we still remember this case, and we still want justice in this case,” Cox said.
At the end of the event, Stonehill Football head coach, Eli Gardner gave Brandon the game ball from the football game the two had played in 2010 before DJ’s murder.
Cox appeared to be at a loss for words.
“I don’t know what to say, man. Thank you, coach, that means a lot to me…. You know it was a big part of my history and of DJ’s history. The sport you know that we both loved, the sport we poured all into,” Cox said. “One thing I am happy about is he was able to play one last time before he went.”
Comments