No one checked on Hurst 3-year-old for hours, witnesses in capital murder trial say

Little Anastasia Williams lived in a Hurst apartment with her 25-year-old father, his 38-year-old girlfriend and her 21-year-old son. Neither man had a job.

After Anastasia, 3, was found dead in bed on March 22, 2013, investigators described the apartment as filthy with no furniture in the living room. The water had been turned off.

Neighbors interviewed by Hurst police said they often heard Anastasia’s father, Robert Williams, yelling and Anastasia crying, “No, Daddy, no!”

On Wednesday, the girlfriend and her son testified in a Tarrant County courtroom that late in the morning of March 22, they separately checked on Anastasia because both thought she was sleeping too late.

The girlfriend didn’t try to wake the girl. Her son realized that she was dead. Neither called for help.

The Tarrant County medical examiner has ruled that Anastasia Williams’ fatal injury was a lacerated liver. Prosecutors say the injury was caused by her father, and he is on trial this week, charged with capital murder.

‘She felt kind of cold’

The son, Fred LaRue, testified that on the night of March 21, Anastasia was crying, and Williams went into her room. LaRue said he heard several loud thuds, and the crying stopped.

LaRue was supposed to baby-sit Anastasia when his mother was at work and Williams was out looking for work. The next morning, he said, he checked on Anastasia about 9 a.m. and thought she was sleeping. He looked again at 11 a.m. after Williams left the apartment in the 800 block of Cullum Court in Hurst.

“It was weird to me that she would sleep that long,” LaRue testified. “I went in, and she’s not moving or anything. I noticed that she was in the same position that she was in when I checked on her before. I felt her and she felt kind of cold.”

LaRue felt for her pulse and felt nothing. He said he pressed down on Anastasia’s chest three times while breathing into her mouth, but that didn’t revive her.

Then, LaRue said, he walked out of the apartment, headed for a pawnshop to seek a friend’s advice and to pawn his cellphone. He didn’t call 911.

“I thought if I called 911 I would have been arrested,” Fred LaRue said. “I thought my mom had already called the cops and set something up. I was afraid that Robert and my mother would plan something against me.”

His friend was not at the pawnshop, LaRue said, so he walked to two McDonald’s restaurants near North Beach Street, one on Interstate 35W and the other on Western Center Boulevard.

“I wanted to see if anyone could pick me up,” Fred LaRue said during cross-examination by defense attorney Bethel T. Zahaie. “I didn’t have my head on straight at the time, so all my decisions were scattershot.”

Zahaie asked: “So instead of calling 911, you sought shelter and to hide out with your friends?”

LaRue said that Williams once pulled a gun, pointed it at his head and fired at the ceiling during an argument.

Home alone

His mother, Danyelle LaRue, testified that Anastasia’s biological mother lived in another state, and Williams and Anastasia had lived with her since November 2011.

Danyelle LaRue went to work at 7 a.m. that day. Williams picked her up at lunchtime, and they came back to the apartment briefly.

“Fred was not there when I got there,” Danyelle LaRue said. “I opened up Anastasia’s room and she was asleep and I shut the door. She was in her bed. I was mad because Fred was not there. She was home alone essentially.”

Williams took Danyelle LaRue back to work and when she returned about 4:15 p.m., “ambulances and police were everywhere,” she testified.

A police officer told her that Anastasia had died, Danyelle LaRue testified.

Prosecutors Dale Smith and Melinda Westmoreland are not seeking the death penalty, so if convicted, Williams, now 28, would be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Testimony is scheduled to continue Thursday in 297th District Court with visiting state District Judge Jerry Woodlock presiding.

This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published January 27, 2016 at 8:40 PM with the headline "No one checked on Hurst 3-year-old for hours, witnesses in capital murder trial say."