He doesn't have any weapons, so that's okay. But the vest, I just checked with a couple of different chars and Bate dropped it every time he died. Might sound silly to suggest this, but maybe you're just not seeing it, as the icon is kinda dark and can easily blend with the background under certain light conditions. It's either something like that or a bug with tactical vest generation, but that would manifest itself elsewhere as well, I think.
