Issues flashing VESC HW 4.12

Hello,

Yesterday, I was working with a VESC HW rev 4.12, it's basically the original VESC hardware aside from some minor modifications to I/O, when suddenly VESC Tool did not recognize that a VESC was plugged in; nor did my computer recognize that the USB port was plugged in. The VESC was running FW 5.1 and had been working the day prior: able to connect via USB with USB power. Since VESC Tool did not recognize the VESC, I thought it may have been possible I killed it with ESD while working on it; although a possibility I was working on a ESD mat to help mitigate this. I have no way to know if that's the case though, so I started to try and reflash the bootloader. I plugged in my STM32 ST-link via SWD and attempted to reflash; however, ST-link utility said that the STM32F4 was in read protection mode level 1 and cannot be erased and as such I cannot change the content of the flash. I also tried uploading a program via STM32cudeIDLE; however it would also fail. Both programs were unable to detect the flash size which is another reason I think it's dead.
The more I speak about this, the more I think I should ask the STM forums as I think the chip is not working. I know that pin BOOT0 is tied to ground so it's hard to reset after it's been set to read protection mode level 1. 

Thank you for any advice,

Nic