Jurors watch detectives’ interviews with suspect in Fort Worth police officer’s death
Jurors on Friday watched video of Fort Worth police detectives interrogating Timothy Huff, on the third day of Huff’s capital murder trial in the 2018 shooting death of Officer Garrett Hull.
Huff was held in an interview room for 11 hours after he was arrested on the morning of Sept. 14, 2018, a detective testified Friday in Tarrant County’s 396th District Court. Detective Amelia Heise said she questioned Huff for about three hours of that time.
Huff is accused of being one of three men involved in a series of robberies, which prosecutors say led to one of the other suspects shooting Hull as officers closed in them.
Heise testified that Huff’s demeanor at first was “calm” and “he was careful ... it was very clear early on he wasn’t being honest.”
She began by telling him that she wanted to get his side of the story and said that she knew “you had nothing to do” with Hull’s death, adding that she knew he “didn’t pull the trigger.”
Huff yawned and told Heise that he didn’t know what she wanted him to tell her, saying something along the lines that “something extra was going on there and I got played,” video of the interview showed.
Huff was vague about the details but said that three other men committed the robbery at a bar and that he wasn’t involved, Heise testified. Huff told Heise that he was never in the suspects’ Chevy Tahoe that was found at the scene. He said that he arrived in a blue Altima, came to the location with someone else and didn’t want to give the person’s name.
When asked about what happened that night, Huff said “supposedly someone pulled a gun on someone else over there.”
Huff told Heise that the robbers were whispering and “secretive” and that he had no idea what was going on. He said he was down the street when the incident occurred and that he heard a gunshot and didn’t know who was shot, according to the video and the detective’s testimony.
“It happened so fast ... I don’t even know,” Huff said in the interview room.
He said he was standing in the street when he saw the police.
In the video footage, Huff said that the shooting and robbery occurred because of retaliation and that in the past, someone pulled a gun on Dacion Steptoe, who Huff referred to as “Boo.”
Prosecutors have said Steptoe shot Hull, and Steptoe was then fatally shot by another officer. The third suspect, Samuel Mayfield, is awaiting trial.
When one of the robbery detectives, who was in the room with Heise, mentioned a series of robberies they thought the three men were connected to, Huff got defensive, according to the video and testimony.
“I haven’t had nothing with the robberies,” Huff said. “That’s not even possible I could be mixed in on that stuff.”
Heise told the court that she felt Huff’s answers were calculated and that “he knew enough about police” and that he could read people and listen to little things they said.
She said Huff became “a lot more defensive ... with pushback ... aggressive,” when they began questioning him about the robbery instead of Hull’s death.
Huff continued talking in circles, she said, and Heise admitted she was “lost” but “entertained the conversation” just to see what he would say. For example, when explaining where they drove earlier in the day, Huff said something along the lines of they “went down the road then took a right then a left then a left then a right then a left,” to try and confuse detectives.
The detectives then realized they had to change their questioning tactics because they weren’t getting anywhere with Huff, Heise said.
Another detective told Huff police had been investigating him and his two friends since June and asked Huff to show his tattoos. Earlier, Huff denied having leg tattoos, but when he pulled up his pants, he had tattoos, according to the testimony.
The detective told Huff he knew he was at the first robbery, in June 2018, “100%”
Huff laughed and said, “That’s impossible.”
Huff later told the investigators that he had remorse “about tonight even though I didn’t do it,” adding that he had no involvement in a cop being shot or “anyone shot, period.”
As the interview continued, Huff began saying that he was “not a perfect person” but the “one thing about the Lord is that he knows all ... He’s going to make a way,” and that “God got me all the way through, no matter what’s being pinned on me.”
After a few hours of interviewing, Heise said, they were going in circles and she was ready to move on to the next suspect.
Heise said that Huff was initially charged with the robberies because Hull was still alive when Huff was taken into custody.
Two detectives, Kopeland and Sullivan, conducted a second interview in which Kopeland testified that Huff appeared “defensive” and refused to give simple answers, even to what he was wearing that night.
Kopeland said detectives showed Huff pictures of Mayfield and Steptoe and he said he had seen the men before. One of the detectives then told Huff that Steptoe was dead.
Again, the detectives said that they knew Huff “played a really small role in this,” before becoming more aggressive with their questioning, asking if he planned to kill people that night and to kill an officer.
Huff began bawling saying that he “didn’t want nobody to get killed,” and that he “didn’t kill nobody.”
Sullivan told Huff he knew that he was connected to multiple robberies, thanking him for wearing “unique clothing” which made it easy to identify him.
After they spoke with Huff for several minutes, Huff finally indicated there was a plan, Kopeland testified. Huff told the detectives that he knew Boo “from around the hood” and that Boo told Huff he wanted to get revenge for an earlier incident. Huff said he didn’t know who the target was and said that Boo was whispering about something with another man.
Huff backtracked and said that “it wasn’t a plan, it was all the sudden,” and that “him and the other one been talking about it and he called me and said ‘I need you.’”
Huff said that he and the other men walked through the back of the bar and that he was only armed with a BB gun.
At a certain point during the robbery, Huff said that he told the other men, “that’s enough, stop” and that they should leave, Kopeland testified. When they left the bar, they saw police standing by their vehicle and that’s when everyone “took off their own way,” Huff said.
Huff said he was caught by police “about five houses down” when he heard gunshots.
Huff then told detectives that “when I heard officer down, I was more worried about him” than his friends. Yet, according to the video and Kopeland, Huff didn’t cry when he was told the officer most likely wouldn’t survive.
When asked if he wanted to do something like this again, Huff said no because “one person was shot and one was killed.”
At the end of the interview, Kopeland said he still didn’t believe the full story and left the room.
The robberies
Hull was shot dead during the investigation in September 2018 while he and other officers were surveilling the three men they suspected in 10 robberies that targeted people inside businesses and one house in Fort Worth.
“Every single victim in every single case was Hispanic,” George Graham, then a Fort Worth Police Department robbery detective, testified.
Some of the victims described a suspect as dressing or presenting in a feminine manner or as if he was gay. The suspect wore tight leggings that stopped at the calf. The description, Graham testified, sounded like Huff.
On the night of Sept. 13, 2018, prosecutors alleged that Huff, Steptoe and Mayfield robbed people at Los Vaqueros bar on Biddison Street at gunpoint. As the suspects ran from the area, Steptoe shot Hull. Another officer shot Steptoe dead. A trial date for Mayfield, who also was indicted on capital murder in Hull’s killing, has not been set.
During opening statements on Monday, prosecutor Lloyd Whelchel said that while Huff may not have pulled the trigger, he is guilty of capital murder because he should have anticipated the possibility that someone would be killed during the robberies.
Huff’s attorneys, William Harris and Patrick Curran, argue that Huff may not have been involved in the earlier robberies, and witness descriptions of the suspects varied in each of the crimes.
On Sept. 13, a police team planned surveillance of the suspects.
Huff ran from the bar and police arrested him in the back yard of a house nearby. Mayfield was arrested in a parking garage.
Also Thursday, an FBI special agent testified that cellphone, Google and Facebook data indicated that Huff appeared to be close to many of the robbery scenes.
The agent, Mark Sedwick, is assigned to the agency’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team. He testified that devices associated with Huff utilized towers that have coverage areas that include the crime scenes at about the times when the robberies occurred.
A cellphone number connected to Huff was often in communication with phones linked to Steptoe and Mayfield, Sedwick testified.
The trial will resume on Monday.
Staff writers Emerson Clarridge and Kaley Johnson contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 10, 2022 at 5:58 PM.
