NewsWest 9
ANDREWS - Piles of old pictures and memories are all 23-year-old Jimmy Hogeland's family has left of him. It's been months since his death and his family in Andrews is seeking justice.
This all happened back on November 5th, 2011 at Graham Central Station in Odessa, where Hogeland was the brunt end of a punch that would end his life.
Official reports said another man punched him in the jaw and he fell back, hitting his head on a bar stool.
Hogeland drove back home to Andrews but the full damage of the blow wouldn't show until nearly a day later.
"I asked 'Do you think you need to go to the doctor?' and he said 'No, Mama, my head just hurts really bad. I think if I can just rest,'" Hogeland's mother, Cristi Harp, said.
Hogeland wasn't pronounced dead until the November 8th, so what happened in-between?
Reports said the ambulance arrived outside Graham Central Station but Hogeland refused medical treatment, not knowing the extent of his injuries.
Initial reports said he waited days before going to the hospital.
His actual death certificate says otherwise.
Hogeland's death certificate said it wasn't days but hours until he went to the hospital.
"I know my brother and he wouldn't have waited," Hogeland's sister, Jheri Adams, said. "We asked the doctor if he would have went as soon as the ambulance came to Graham's, if he would have went, if it could have saved him and they told us no."
Hogeland's family confirmed that 12 hours after he arrived home, he was rushed to Permian Regional Medical Center in Andrews and then airlifted to Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, where a little more than 10 hours later, he was pronounced brain dead.
The certificate totals 23 hours from injury to brain death but his family kept him on life support.
"Even with the medications and the life support, his body was shutting down and they weren't going to be able to even keep his heart rate and his blood pressure and all of that going, so then we made a decision as a family to go ahead and take him off," Harp said.
So Hogeland was pronounced dead on the 8th.
Other news sources claim the man who punched Hogeland to be Gordon Hare.
Hogeland's family said Hare turned himself in once Hogeland was pronounced dead but Hare was let go because the autopsy wasn't finished.
A trial this past March allegedly no-billed Hare, meaning they didn't find enough evidence for an indictment.
Now Hogeland's family wants to know why, especially since the death certificate ruled the cause to be homicide.
They're seeking other avenues, possibly a civil lawsuit.
"Something civil. I will not stop until there are some charges and he has to face what he did," Hogeland's aunt, Michelle Lawson, said. "He didn't do it on purpose but he did it. He took our life from us. That is our life."
