Frederick Cox Jr.

Frederick Rodriquez Smith Cox Jr., 18, was shot and killed by a plainclothes Davidson County, North Carolina sheriff's detective outside a funeral at Living Water Baptist Church in High Point on November 8, 2020, after gunfire broke out in the parking lot as mourners were leaving. Witnesses said Cox was helping people get to safety when Detective Michael Shane Hill, who was attending the funeral of a separate homicide victim he had been investigating, shot him multiple times. Hill said he saw Cox holding a handgun, and a gun was found near his body afterward, but Cox's autopsy found no gunshot residue on his hands, meaning he had not fired a weapon. The state medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. A Guilford County grand jury declined to indict Hill in June 2021, seven months after the shooting. No one has ever been charged in Cox's death.

High Point, NC · Davidson County

• 2020: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The funeral, the outbreak of gunfire in the parking lot, and the shooting, per the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's report and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner's autopsy findings.
• Detective Hill was attending the funeral of Jonas Tramone Thompson Jr., a homicide victim he was actively investigating, at the request of Thompson's family, when gunfire broke out among other funeral attendees in the parking lot.
• Hill reported seeing Cox holding a handgun at the moment he fired, and a gun was found near Cox's body after the shooting; multiple witnesses told reporters they never saw Cox with a firearm and disputed the account.
• Cox's autopsy, performed November 10, 2020 and released the following March, found he was shot four times — in the neck, shoulder, back, and thigh — with no gunshot residue present on either hand, indicating he had not fired a weapon.
• The state medical examiner classified the manner of death as homicide, with cause of death listed as multiple gunshot wounds.
• A Guilford County grand jury reviewed two possible charges, voluntary manslaughter and felony assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, and declined to indict Hill on either on June 1, 2021, finding insufficient evidence to support criminal charges.
• High Point police separately released information describing Cox as having gang affiliations; his mother and friends publicly disputed that characterization, saying he had posted repeatedly on social media against gang violence.
• Cox's family filed a federal lawsuit against the Davidson County Sheriff's Office and Detective Hill, which settled for $4 million in early 2025, more than four years after his death.

• Whether Cox was in fact holding a firearm at the moment Hill fired, as Hill's account maintained, or whether the gun recovered near his body ended up there through some other means, given the absence of gun residue on his hands directly contradicted the justification for the shooting, was never resolved by any criminal trial since the grand jury declined to indict.
• Why witnesses' accounts describing Cox helping others to safety, rather than participating in the gunfire, differed so sharply from the detective's account has not been reconciled in any public record.
• The specific reasoning behind the grand jury's insufficient-evidence finding, given the autopsy's own physical findings, has not been made public, as grand jury proceedings are sealed under North Carolina law.

• WFMY News 2 — “Grand Jury: No charges for Davidson County detective who SBI says shot 18-year-old Fred Cox at a funeral”
• FOX8 WGHP — “No indictment for Davidson County deputy after 18-year-old Frederick Cox Jr. shot, killed at funeral in High Point; family will file civil suit”
• FOX8 WGHP — “Family speaks after settlement in lawsuit against Davidson County Sheriff's Office on behalf of Fred Cox Jr.”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs