Rick Davis doesn’t remember the fall.
Sometime around the morning of Feb. 3, 2021, the Sheridan man believes he slipped on ice and struck his head. He only knows it happened because he mentioned it to someone afterward — a conversation now lost amid the months of memories erased by a life-threatening stroke.
At the time, Davis told Cowboy State Daily, “I thought it was the worst of the concussion.”
But looking back, it appears possible that the impact set in motion a hemorrhagic stroke that would go undiagnosed through encounters with police officers, paramedics, and jail staff — leaving Davis in a holding cell for hours while his brain bled.
By the time medical professionals finally recognized what was happening, doctors worried he wouldn’t survive.
Now 42, the Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq has not only survived but rebuilt his life. He owns a home in Sheridan, does deliveries and is pursuing his insurance license. He hasn’t touched alcohol in nearly five years, he said, though he still frequents the local bars.
“I’ll drink Dr. Pepper,” Davis said. “You know how much money I save by not drinking?”
Davis contacted Cowboy State Daily after a Jan. 15 story about body camera footage from the February 2021 incident that has since gone viral, generating an outcry on social media.
In a phone call and written responses to questions, Davis explained why he decided to share his story now.
“I recently saw a video put out on YouTube by KARE 11 Investigation about a 50-year-old postal worker who died in jail in Minnesota in 2024 due to the jailers ignoring him while he had a stroke,” Davis wrote. “This made me realize that this is happening way too often in our country today and the public needed to know about these kinds of incidents.”
Davis said he is not seeking financial compensation or a settlement.
“I NEVER WANT THIS TO HAPPEN to anyone else ever again,” he wrote. “There needs to be proper training and education for Police, Sheriffs, Jailers & EMT personnel. Every one of these fields had something they did wrong that made my situation way worse than it ever needed to be. With a stroke EVERY second is vital.”
Pounding Headaches
The night after his fall, Davis walked to Sutton’s Tavern in Sheridan from his home, had a few drinks, then called a taxi to take him to the downtown bars. He has lost three to four months of memory due to the stroke and has pieced together what happened through conversations with friends and data from his phone.
Around midnight or 1 a.m. on Feb. 4, Davis called another taxi to take him home. He was complaining to other patrons and the bartender about severe headaches — a warning sign of the stroke building inside his skull.
But he got out of the cab about a block after getting in.
“Speaking to the cab driver, I was extremely agitated (completely unusual for me as I know this cab driver quite well) and complaining of bad headaches,” Davis wrote.
“That’s why I called the cab to get me home from the bar,” he said Friday. “Because I don’t drive when I drink. And I had the cab driver actually let me out because I was getting to be really agitated, a big asshole. And I was complaining about massive headaches.”
He attempted to walk the remaining mile home but dropped his phone along the way. Google Maps tracking showed he took a sporadic and unusual route before the phone was lost about four blocks from his residence.
Davis believes he climbed into an unlocked car to escape the 20-degree temperatures.
“I’m assuming I laid down to attempt to warm up in the unlocked car about three blocks from where my phone was lost and one block from where I was arrested,” Davis wrote.
Later, a woman leaving a 24-hour gym spotted Davis lying in the road, unable to get up, and called 911 requesting an ambulance.
Police soon arrived.
Missed Signs
Body camera footage shows officers administered two breathalyzer tests. The first registered 0.062 and the second 0.016 — both below the legal limit to drive.
“I would’ve been sober enough to drive and I was on foot at the time,” Davis wrote.
Officers noted the cut on Davis’s forehead from his earlier fall and called for emergency medical services. But paramedics checked only his blood sugar — not his blood pressure.
“If the EMS would have followed their proper procedures, at the bare minimum they should’ve taken my blood pressure in addition to my blood sugar,” Davis wrote. “There are vital signs that are supposed to be checked on any incident.”
After paramedics cleared him, officers arrested Davis for being an intoxicated pedestrian on a roadway, criminal entry and theft from a motor vehicle because he allegedly removed a blanket.
“Looking back, I think both the officers and the EMS should’ve recognized that it was a medical emergency,” Davis wrote. “The officers should know that it isn’t intoxication when they have not one but two PBTs that came back with readings that I was below the limit to drive, so obviously I wasn’t ‘obviously extremely intoxicated’ as the officer states in the footage.”
Marine Veteran
Davis was born and raised in Sheridan. He left to join the Marine Corps and served as a 3043 supply technician, reaching the rank of corporal.
He deployed to Iraq in 2005, spending seven months on the ground during some of the conflict’s most intense fighting.
“I was there in the shitstorm,” Davis said Friday. “It wasn’t fun to be in Iraq in 2005. Let me just say it that way.”
Beyond his supply duties, Davis volunteered for personal security details, accompanying VIPs when they visited his area of operations.
He returned to Sheridan in 2006 and eventually hired on with BNSF Railway, working as a railroader for nearly a decade. He left the railroad in June 2020. Eight months later, his life changed forever.
Saved By Jailer
Davis said he owes his life to a jail employee who refused to let staff leave him in his cell when they couldn’t wake him for his court appearance.
“I was told that when they couldn’t wake me up for court, the detention staff was just going to leave me there until the next day,” Davis wrote.
He later learned the employee who intervened has since become a police officer. Davis said he encountered that officer at a traffic accident two years later.
On that February night in 2021, “He said ‘No, that guy had barely any alcohol when he came in, there is no way he still has some in his system,” Davis wrote. “He then went into the holding cell, woke me up and handed me a pen to have me write something. I wrote nothing but scribbles. He then said he instructed the other jailers I need to go to the hospital ASAP.”
Davis’s mother received a call from Sheridan Memorial Hospital telling her if she wanted to see her son while he was still alive, she needed to get there quickly.
He was airlifted to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Billings.
One medical bill provided to Cowboy State Daily totaled $675,154.59.
Long Recovery
Davis spent more than three months hospitalized across four different facilities, from Feb. 4 until May 7, 2021. He was placed in a medically induced coma for more than five weeks.
“Numerous doctors at (one facility) attempted to talk my mom into pulling the plug on me while I was in the coma,” Davis wrote. “They told her if I lived, I would be a vegetable having to live in a specialized nursing home, that the nearest was Minnesota.”
His neurosurgeon was the only one who held out hope.
“He said within a year he thought I would walk and talk but didn’t know if they would be able to understand me or if I would be able to understand him,” Davis wrote. “He believed because they had found me walking and talking, he could at least get me back to that point.”
Davis said his recovery required relearning virtually everything.
“I literally had to reteach myself how to do everything during this time, including walking, reading, typing,” he wrote. “For a portion of my stays in the hospitals I couldn’t even swallow or eat for weeks.”
After his release, Davis worked as a cashier at Star Liquor in Sheridan to help with his rehabilitation.
“I put myself back working to attempt to help me finish the steps of recovery and retraining I needed,” he wrote. “I’d say I was back to 100% about May or June of 2022.”
VA Denial
Buckling under medical debt, Davis turned to the Veterans Administration, where he’d been enrolled for 20 years. The VA declined to cover the costs, he said.
“The VA declared this non-emergency care,” Davis said Friday. “So the VA didn’t pay for it.”
Davis ultimately filed for bankruptcy.
The stroke also ended his railroad career. After recovering, he was offered a position with Union Pacific in Cheyenne but couldn’t pass the medical requirements.
Path Ahead
Today, Davis said his health exceeds all expectations, and he’s busy moving on.
“I’m not looking for help for a lawsuit. That ship has sailed a long time ago,” Davis said Friday. “My desire from this is solely that it never happens again to anyone.”
Capt. Tom Ringley of the Sheridan Police Department said officers followed proper procedures during the 2021 encounter with Davis.
“The gentleman was cleared medically by medical professionals,” Ringley said. “Police officers are not medical professionals.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
