Former officer pleads guilty to mistreating prisoner paralyzed in
Connecticut police van
[November 13, 2025]
By DAVE COLLINS
A former Connecticut police officer accused of mistreating prisoner
Richard “Randy” Cox after he was paralyzed in the back of a police van
pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor Wednesday and received no jail time,
while three other officers chose to take their cases to trial.
Betsy Segui, a former New Haven sergeant who supervised the city police
station lockup, pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless endangerment in
exchange for a 60-day suspended jail term. Another former officer,
Ronald Pressley, took the same plea deal and received an identical
sentence last week.
Cox, 39, who did not attend the New Haven Superior Court hearing, was
left paralyzed from the chest down on June 19, 2022, when the police van
he was riding in without a seat belt braked hard, sending him head-first
into a metal partition while his hands were cuffed behind his back. He
had been arrested on charges of threatening a woman with a gun, which
were later dismissed.
“I can’t move. I’m going to die like this. Please, please, please help
me,” Cox said in the van minutes after the crash, according to police
video. He later was found to have broken his neck.
Once at the police station, officers mocked Cox and accused him of being
drunk and faking his injuries, according to surveillance and body-worn
camera footage. Officers dragged Cox out of the van and around the
police station before placing him in a holding cell before his eventual
transfer to a hospital.
When Cox told the officers that he thought he had cracked his neck,
Segui responded, “You ain’t crack nothing. You just drank too much,”
according to an internal affairs investigation report.
Segui did not speak about Cox's treatment during the court hearing. She
only answered standard questions from the judge about her guilty plea.
Her lawyer, Gregory Cerritelli, said Segui wanted to put the criminal
case behind her.
“She’s no longer working in law enforcement and has no desire to, so I
think from her perspective this just gives her closure and lets her move
on with her life and focus on her new career,” he said in an interview
after the hearing. He declined to say what Segui's new career is.
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Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump takes part in a march for
justice for Richard "Randy" Cox to the New Haven Police Department
on July 8, 2022, in New Haven, Conn. (Arnold Gold/New Haven Register
via AP, File)
Three other officers involved in Cox's transport, Oscar Diaz,
Jocelyn Lavandier and Luis Rivera, rejected plea deals proposed by
prosecutors and chose to take their cases to trial. All three are
charged with cruelty to persons and reckless endangerment.
Prosecutors said Cox was informed about Segui's plea deal beforehand
and gave his consent. In 2023, the city of New Haven agreed to
settle a lawsuit by Cox for $45 million.
Louis Rubano, a lawyer for Cox, said Cox and his family had hoped
the criminal cases would end as quickly as possible with plea
bargains by all five officers.
“I think bringing a conclusion to this tragic situation is what the
family wants, and the fact now that there’s going to be potentially
a trial for the other remaining officers forces Randy and his family
to have to kind of re-live the events of that tragic day,” Rubano
said.
Rubano said Cox has bought a home and is living there with his
mother, who is caring for him with the help of medical
professionals.
The case drew outrage from civil rights advocates including the
NAACP, along with comparisons to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore.
Cox is Black, while all five officers who were arrested are Black or
Hispanic. Gray, who also was Black, died in 2015 after he suffered a
spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a Baltimore police
van.
The case also led to reforms at the New Haven police department as
well as a statewide seat belt requirement for prisoners.
New Haven police fired Segui, Diaz, Lavandier and Rivera for
violating police conduct policies, while Pressley retired. Diaz
appealed his firing and got his job back. Diaz, who was driving the
van when Cox got injured, said he had to brake hard to avoid an
accident with another vehicle.
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