‘Miracle’ Continues For Policeman Who Revived After Years In Coma

Ever since the day 7-1/2 years ago when former police Officer Ken Cox resuscitated his wounded partner Gary Dockery, Cox has tortured himself with questions, wondering whether he did the right thing.

“I’ve kicked myself for years because I knew the boy wouldn’t want to live on machines,” Cox said. “I had convinced myself that I had done the wrong thing reviving him, and it was a terrible feeling that I had to live with. But now that he has come back, I’ve suddenly thought to myself, God, I did the right thing.”

Dockery, now 42, was shot in the forehead when responding to a police call on Sept. 17, 1988.

Most of the years since then he has been in a nursing home, motionless and speechless, unable to feed himself. But last weekend, because of a possible lung infection, he was moved to Columbia Parkridge Medical Center here, where he spoke for the first time since he had been shot.

Dockery’s relatives said that in his first 18 hours after awakening he talked almost non-stop, recalling names and middle names of a host of people, the names of his horses and the color of his jeep, and fending off suggestions that he rest.

“I can’t count the times that I sat by his bed and prayed for him to say something,” said his brother, Dennis Dockery, noting that in the last two years it had seemed to him that his brother had given up on life. “Call it a miracle, call it a touch by God’s hand. It took 7-1/2 years for this prayer to be answered.”

Doctors at the hospital call Dockery’s improvement a miracle as well. They have stopped short of calling the state from which he emerged a coma because Dockery remained conscious, was able to breath on his own and could respond with eye motions to some questions at some times.

He underwent surgery on Thursday morning to remove the fluid and throughout the day his condition has been steadily upgraded, from serious to, by late Thursday afternoon, stable.