‘I plan to visit him in jail,’ sister says of Fort Worth man accused of killing dad
Jessi Garcia was living through a family’s worst nightmare on Monday.
Her father, 63-year-old Reynaldo Garcia Jr., was killed Thursday at the family’s south Fort Worth home, suffering traumatic injuries to his head and upper body.
On Saturday, her brother, a U.S. Marine veteran who served two tours in Iraq, was arrested and accused in the killing of their father.
Reynaldo Garcia III, 35, remained in the Tarrant County Jail on Monday and he faces a charge of murder.
This all happened just over 25 years after their mother, Donna Garcia, was shot and killed during a robbery as she spoke on an outdoor pay phone to her husband, Reynaldo Garcia Jr. Two men were later arrested in the case.
“The doctors said his mental problems came from Mom’s murder and the war,” Jessi Garcia said Monday, referring to Rey Garcia III in a telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “We had just moved my grandfather out of the house about two weeks ago because Dad had said my brother was getting too aggressive.”
That had left just her father and brother living in the family’s home in south Fort Worth
Jessi Garcia said she had stopped by her father’s home on Wednesday.
“My brother even gave me a hug,” Jessi Garcia said. In the past, she noted that her brother would become upset just seconds after she would walk into the home. Wednesday, “he seemed happy.”
Her father also seemed fine.
“I didn’t stay very long because I knew my brother would eventually get upset,” she said. “It was a good visit.”
Her sister called Thursday after Fort Worth police contacted her.
“At first, I was wondering why she was calling if the police were at Dad’s house,” Jessi Garcia said. “He would have been the one to call if there was a problem.”
On Monday, no one was staying at the family’s home..
The tragedies for this family began on Feb. 25, 1995. Garcia and his then 10-year-old son, Rey, ran the 10K race of the Cowtown Marathon, and the father went to work that evening as manager of a Taco Cabana. His wife had planned to run with them, but she had worked late and couldn’t make the race. Jessi was 8 years old at the time, and there were two younger sisters in the family.
That night, Donna Garcia called her husband from a payphone outside a gas station in south Fort Worth. She was on the phone with Reynaldo Garcia when he heard a single gunshot and heard himself yell, “No, Donna.”
Two men, 20 and 21, were charged with the crime. One of them, Derrick Reagin, told police he was driving with his friend Quincy Patterson and they needed gas money. He said Patterson “told me to pull over, he was going to get some money.”
In a letter from prison to the Star-Telegram, Reagin said he didn’t know Patterson was going to hurt anyone, but when he got back in the car Patterson said he had shot Donna Garcia.
Former Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders starting writing columns on the Garcia family about three years after their mother was shot to death.
In one column in 2013, Sanders wrote, ”The family was involved in a program at The Warm Place, a support center for grieving children and their families.”
“The father had devoted himself to his kids,” the column continued. “Garcia was going to work at 3 or 4 a.m., returning home to get the kids ready for school, then dropping the girls off at 8:30 a.m. and Rey at 9. He’d go back to work then pick them up at three different times. He learned to braid and plait the girls’ hair, and as the kids got older he made time for their volleyball, soccer and pole vaulting. About eight years ago, he took a job at a Grand Prairie manufacturing company for more predictable hours, making it easier to look after his children. And he seems to have done a very good job of it.
“The youngest daughter is majoring in biochemistry at Texas Christian University; the oldest works as a job coach at Six Flags Over Texas and cares for a child with Down syndrome; and the third is enrolled at Tarrant County College.
“I told Rey’s story in this space a few weeks ago, about his being a good student in school, applying for the U.S. Naval Academy and then joining the Marines.
“He served two tours in Iraq and received many commendations but was discharged (‘under other than honorable conditions’) after he started getting drunk and fighting.”
Sanders also wrote, “Most people didn’t know he was having nightmares and suicidal thoughts, and was, as he put it, ‘begging and dying on the inside for somebody to help me.’”
Rey was charged with aggravated assault for hurting his girlfriend and threatening other people. according to that 2013 column, and he had been in and out of jail.
“His father has been standing by his side, trying to get him help and showing up in the courtroom holding a stack of Rey’s Marine certificates and honors,” Sanders wrote.
For years, Reynaldo Garcia Jr. stood by his son.
“My father was at that house with my brother because he never stopped trying to help him,” Jessi Garcia said as she cried for her family Monday. “I plan to visit my brother in jail because it’s what Dad would have wanted.”
This report contains information from Fort Worth Star-Telegram archives.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 4:40 PM.
