Third suspect pleads guilty in shooting of Paschal student at Fort Worth Whataburger
Daniel Reed will spend 13 years in prison for his role in the 2023 shooting that killed one Paschal High School student and wounded another at a Whataburger near the Fort Worth campus.
Reed, 18, and two other people have now pleaded guilty to charges stemming for the shooting that killed 17-year-old Zechariah Trevino and rocked the school community. Reed was charged with murder, but that charge was dropped as a part of a deal for his guilty plea Wednesday to aggravated assault. A sexual assault charge against him in a separate case was also waived.
Isaiah Nunez, 18, previously pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was also sentenced to 17 years in prison for aggravated assault for injuring Trevino’s cousin Mia Dominguez in the shooting.
Reed and Nunez were former Paschal High School students.
The shooting happened around 4 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2023, when Reed, wearing a balaclava that covered most of his face and carrying a handgun, got out of a car at the Whataburger on West Berry Street near the high school, police wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit.
Nunez joined him, according to another arrest warrant affidavit, and chambered a handgun as they argued with Trevino and his cousin. Reed fired the first shot, which hit Dominguez in the stomach, according to the affidavit. Nunez also shot at Dominguez and fired eight to 10 rounds at Trevino. As they left, Nunez fired again, shooting Dominguez, who was already on the ground with a gunshot wound, police said.
Trevino’s family previously said he died trying to protect his cousin.
Another person arrested, a then 16-year-old who drove the vehicle the others used to get away, was sentenced to 120 days of incarceration, 10 years of probation and a $1,000 fine. He pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Two counts of murder and one charge of deadly conduct/discharge of firearm were dropped as a part of the deal for his plea.
Family responds
Dominguez said in victim impact statements after Reed’s sentencing Wednesday that he at one point sent someone to her to apologize.
“That apology will never be accepted,” Dominguez told him.
She said she and Reed knew each other from school and that he’d talked to her in the hallways. She also said he’d decided to sentence himself.
“You knew what you were doing,” she told him. “You came in with a ski mask. ... I’m still here. I have a career.”
But Trevino isn’t here, she told him.
“You took my cousin’s life and you tried to take mine, and you failed,” she said.
Trevino’s girlfriend was pregnant with their child at the time of the shooting. That’s something his aunt, Dominguez’s mother, reminded Reed about in the victim impact statements.
“You took a son,” she said. “You took my nephew. You took a brother. Most importantly, you took a father. ... I don’t wish your time in prison to be hard. I pray for your peace as I pray for my sister and nephew.”
She also said it doesn’t matter how much time Reed spends in prison, it won’t bring Trevino back and it won’t undo the harm done to Dominguez. But she hopes he will have time to learn while he is in prison and that he will make decisions that better his life when he is out. She said that she knew he had people supporting him, and that should make it possible to live a better life.
“Not only do you owe that to yourself, you owe that to the people who showed up for you,” she told him.
But Dominguez’s father, Trevino’s uncle, expressed different feelings. With tears in his eyes when he sat down behind the microphone to give his victim impact statement, he had to take a moment to compose himself. His voice was choked when the first words found their way out.
He told Reed that with a 13-year sentence, he will still have enough time when he is released to live his life and maybe have children.
He was visibly angry as he talked about how his daughter was nearly killed in the shooting.
“I already lost one daughter and you almost took another one,” he told him. “God forbid any of this happens to you if you have children.”
According to an affidavit, Dominguez told police the argument that led to the shooting came after she had criticized a group of former friends she believes were involved in the overdose death of her sister.
Dominguez’s father told Reed he doesn’t forgive him and that he doesn’t think 13 years is enough time.
“I wanted you to never see daylight again,” he told Reed. “If it were up to me, I would bury you in a hole and leave you there.”
Sexual assault charge
A sexual assault charge filed against Reed in an unrelated case was waived as a part of the plea agreements he entered Wednesday.
Reed was arrested in March 2023 after police said he raped a teenage girl in Arlington. A search warrant affidavit seeking to collect Reed’s DNA said that he was accused of sexually assaulting the girl after a night of drinking and doing drugs. In the affidavit, an Arlington police detective wrote that Reed and three other young men picked up the girl after she sneaked out of her house one night.
The girl eventually passed out, according to the search warrant. She told police that when she woke up the following morning, she was naked from the waist down and a man was lying next to her. Police later identified that man as Reed. The girl got up, got dressed and went to school, where she told someone about the assault, and officers were called to the school.
Investigators wrote in the affidavit that Reed sexually assaulted the girl on Dec. 14, 2022. He was identified through messages he sent to her.
Because the sexual assault and murder charge were waived in exchange for his guilty plea, the charges cannot be brought again.
Staff writer Emily Brindley contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 27, 2024 at 1:38 PM.