Another Texas Stand-off Denial Suggests Sheriff's Cover-up 
in Recent Shotgun Attack
by Pat Shannan 
On Labor Day evening, September 4, a group of four beer-swigging holiday revelers
decided to pay a visit to the Joe Gray farm near Trinidad, Texas. Three were riding in
the cab of a pickup truck, and one was riding in the back with a shotgun. As they
passed the gate at the Gray ranch, Milton Ray Sparks Jr. leveled his shotgun and shot
at Jonathon Gray, 30, the oldest son of Joe and Alicia Gray. Witnesses said that the
truck hit a bump in the road just before Sparks fired and the blast went over Gray’s
head and into the tree leaves.

Unbeknownst to Sparks at the time, the Grays’ son-in-law was shooting the whole time,
too, only with a video camera. The three men in the cab were clearly identifiable on the
tape, a copy of which was turned over to the Henderson County Sheriff’s Department.
One of the men is said to be with the police department in Malakoff, a nearby town.
Milton Sparks was jailed under a $10,000 bond and charged with felony assault with a
deadly weapon. He was released on bail the next day.

Henderson County Chief Deputy Ronnie Brownlow told us that the other three were not
arrested but were “under investigation.” When asked if it was not normal procedure for
everyone in the car to be arrested in the event of a drive-by shooting, he said, “Not
necessarily.” Brownlow also denied any knowledge of one of the men being a police
officer from Malakoff.

When presented with this scenario, a former sheriff from another state said, “That is
strange, because anywhere else in the country they would arrest all of them in a
heartbeat, and then they would investigate while all were incarcerated.”

The Assistant Chief of Police of a capital city in yet another state concurred. “I don’t
know what the law is in Texas,” he said, when told the scenario, “but here we would
have held all four and confiscated the truck. Then we would check with the District
Attorney to see if we had charges on all of them or just the shooter. And if a cop was
with them, I can guarantee you he would lose his job, whether he was drunk or sober.”

At press time, the office of District Attorney Donna Bennett had no information to offer
because “no case has been filed in our office at this time.”

“The denial is ridiculous,” say Joe and Alicia Gray, who have been under county scrutiny
for months. “There were three people in the cab and one in the back shooting. We gave
the sheriff a copy of the video, and it very clearly shows it.”

The day after filing the complaint, the Grays inquired as to why the other three in the
truck had not been jailed and charged. Captain Mark Jordan said that the Texas
Rangers were investigating the incident. That answer did not make sense to anyone
outside of the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office, as the Texas Rangers certainly do not
investigate every shooting in the state. Local skeptics suspect that the Sheriff’s
Department, by claiming there were only two people in the cab, may be attempting to
cover up the fact that a city policeman from their county was involved in the shooting.
He is believed to be a cousin of the shooter and is also named Sparks.

There appears to have been a total blackout with the news media in the area. Even the
Dallas Morning News, which has run several articles on the Gray family in recent
months, had not mentioned the addition of the drive-by in this very explosive story by
the following weekend.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Ronnie Brownlow, who is the sole spokesman for the Sheriff’s
Department, says that the investigation is continuing, but he refused to reveal the
names of the other three men involved. Brownlow, a former Texas Ranger for 19 years
before joining the Henderson County Sheriff’s Department, did confirm that the Texas
Rangers were now investigating this latest incident because the Rangers had charge of
the previous case involving 51-year-old Joe Gray. Meanwhile, the Joe Gray family has
other problems mounting. 

--- snip...

Read the rest of the story in the October 2000 Issue of Media Bypass
http://www.4bypass.com

Please support the magazine. Your support and help can insure that future articles
continue being published and posted. For now, we're working to provide more, rather
than less. Thank you for your interest and support.

To Subscribe Call: 1 800 4BYPASS | 429-7277 
On Line Order & Info Request Mail Order Print & Send


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mb@md-webdesign.com questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2000 Alternative Media Inc.
Last modified: October 03, 2000