Grand jury declines to indict Fort Worth man on murder charge in wife’s shooting death
A Tarrant County grand jury has decided not to indict a man police said shot and killed his wife after an apparent fight in September 2023, according to court records.
The jury handed up the no bill in the case of Robert Holbert on Wednesday, according to his defense attorney, Lesa Pamplin.
Robert Holbert had faced a murder charge after he was accused by police of shooting and killing Paris Holbert, his wife, in their Fort Worth apartment on Sept. 16, 2023.
Pamplin reached out to the Star-Telegram about the grand jury decision but was not immediately available for comment Wednesday afternoon. She wrote in an email that “it’s important that people know my client was no-billed by the grand jury today.”
Police received a 911 call around 2:45 a.m. that day in which a person said their neighbor was banging on their door, covered in blood and saying his girlfriend had been shot, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram at the time.
Officers responded to the 500 Flats Apartments in the 600 block of Woodchucker Drive and found 29-year-old Paris Holbert with a gunshot wound inside one of the apartments. She died at a hospital less than an hour later. Robert Holbert told police that his wife had shot herself and the gun was still in the apartment, the arrest warrant said.
Robert Holbert had a laceration on his arm when police found him, either from a cut or a gunshot, and would not tell investigators how he got it, police said at the time. Police said they later learned from a medical investigator that the laceration was from a gunshot.
In the apartment, officers found signs of “an intensive altercation,” the warrant said. A Glock handgun was lying on a couch in the living room, a spent casing stuck inside it. Several knives were scattered across the floor and a large candle was broken.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Paris Holbert was killed by a single gunshot wound to her right breast, which passed into her chest. The medical examiner’s office listed the manner of her death as undetermined, meaning it was not ruled a homicide, suicide or accident.
“Based upon the location of the gunshot wound, it does not appear that she could have shot herself,” police wrote in the affidavit.