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Everyone agrees that Christopher Brosky didn’t pull the trigger on the shotgun that killed Donald Thomas early one June morning in 1991.
Brosky’s buddy William "Trey" Roberts admitted shooting Thomas, 32, who was sitting on a flatbed truck in east Arlington, drinking beer with friends. Roberts fired from the front passenger seat of a 1965 Mustang driven by a second friend, Joshua Hendry.Regardless, it’s Brosky’s name that is indelibly linked to the slaying, which outraged many in Tarrant County because of its random brutality and blatant racism.Thomas was black. The boys in the Mustang were 16-year-old white skinheads.And when an all-white Tarrant County jury convicted Brosky of murder in March 1993, and turned around and recommended that he serve only probation, protests erupted.Four days after Brosky’s sentencing, an estimated 10,000 people marched in downtown Fort Worth to protest the lenient sentence.The outcry by ministers, politicians and ordinary people, including Thomas’ widow, led to the passage of the state’s first hate crime law.And the Tarrant County district attorney’s office responded by filing new charges against Brosky, overcoming defense objections that doing so was double jeopardy.Brosky’s second trial was moved to Galveston, where the jury included two blacks and one Hispanic. They heard much more about Brosky’s skinhead activities, and he was convicted of engaging in organized crime with the intent to commit murder and received 40 years in prison — the same as Roberts.Almost 20 years have passed. With no public notice, Brosky, now 34, is free again.He was released from prison Aug. 10 and was deported to his native Canada on Sept. 17."I figured one day he’d be getting out," said Carolyn Thomas, who gave testimony opposing the release of her husband’s killers each time he came before the parole board.Thomas said she was notified that Brosky was being paroled but had no idea he had been deported."I never really thought about whether he’d be around here," she said. "My focus was just that he stay in prison longer."A flash, then a bangCarolyn Thomas’ emotional testimony before a state legislative committee — one week after Brosky’s first trial ended — was credited with winning the votes to pass the first hate crime bill in Texas history.Legislators were inspired by the young woman’s story about her husband’s murder as he and several co-workers relaxed outside one man’s home after they finished an overnight shift at a Grand Prairie liquor distributor.Steve Sloan, a white co-worker, told police that he and Thomas were sitting on a flatbed truck when a Ford Mustang drove by twice. The second time, Sloan said, the Mustang stopped just feet from the truck. Sloan said he saw a flash, heard a bang, and then saw Thomas fall off the truck into the road, shot in the chest, mortally wounded.
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