Brazos County Sheriff’s Office Shows Off New Bulletproof Vests And Announces A DPS Award

Brazos County sheriff’s chief deputy Jim Stewart showing county commissioners one of the new bulletproof vests.

Every first responder in Brazos County now has a ceramic bulletproof vest. Brazos County sheriff’s chief deputy Jim Stewart updated county commissioners on the purchase of 130 new ceramic shields.

The equipment was paid by a $119,000 dollar grant from the governor’s office.

The vests went to the sheriff’s and constable offices, along with the county attorney and investigators with the county and district attorney’s offices.

The ceramic plate carrier, which is placed over the top of an officer’s existing body armor, will provide protection from rifle rounds.

Stewart also thanked county commissioners for providing $16,000 to pay for trauma kits that attach to the carrier holders.

Click below for comments from Jim Stewart:

 

In a separate item, a retired investigator with the sheriff’s office recently received an award from the director of the department of public safety. Kenny Elliott was recognized for his 25 years of work to solve the cold case murder of Virginia Freeman.

Photo of (L-R) Kenny Elliott and DPS director Steven McCraw from the Brazos County sheriff’s office.

News release from the Texas Department of Public Safety:

Kenny Elliott, Retired Investigator–Brazos County Sheriff’s Office, received a Director’s Award. On Dec. 1, 1981, real estate agent Virginia “Ginger” Bradford Freeman was murdered behind a vacant residence in Brazos County. After scheduling a showing with a potential buyer, Freeman left her office and stopped by her home to let her children know about the showing and potential sale. Freeman never returned home that day. That night, her husband reported her missing to the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office. Freeman’s body was found behind the residence she had been showing. The murder remained unsolved, and in 1993, Brazos County Investigator Elliott reopened the cold case. Elliott worked alongside three generations of Texas Rangers, pursuing leads, conducting interviews and collecting evidence all over the country. A DNA sample had been collected from underneath Freeman’s fingernails, but no match could be identified. In April 2017, Investigator Elliott obtained a voluntary DNA sample from the biological son of James Earhart — a man who had been executed in 1999 for the murder of a nine-year-old girl from Bryan. Based upon parental lineage, the DNA sample obtained from Earhart’s son resulted in a match to the sample collected from Freeman’s fingernails.

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