‘That life is gone.’ Grief lasts for Fort Worth mom who lost daughter to domestic violence
So much appeared to be fine.
In Tricia Hanson’s assessment, Garrett Benson had qualities that made him a model boyfriend for her daughter. When they met in 2019, Sara was 24. He was a year younger. At formal family dinners, Garrett was polite and well mannered.
Tricia allows now that the pleasant behavior was a misleading public display. It belied Garrett’s problematic drinking and controlling approach to his relationship with Sara, an affable University of Texas at Arlington nursing student who grew up on the soccer fields of southwest Fort Worth and spent summer weekends at her grandparents’ lake house in East Texas. She longed for a career as a pediatric ICU nurse caring for acutely ill children.
A graduate of Southwest Christian School and UTA, Garrett worked as a bank manager in Burleson. He appeared to be a guy who any mother would like for her child to date, Tricia says. His brother Griffin Benson was an Aledo High School student when in 2016 he went to the Atlanta Braves in the 23rd round of the Major League Baseball Draft.
Sara met Garrett in March 2019 on St. Patrick’s Day at a Fort Worth pub.
Seven months into the relationship, on a day which the couple was to have spent with Sara’s friends, Garrett broke up with Sara and asked her to leave his apartment. She declined. Police officers were summoned. Sara eventually went to her mother’s house.
Tricia, a retired Tarrant County probation officer, hoped the relationship was over. The following day, Garrett apologized, and the couple was again together.
In mid-2020, after a drunken day on the water over Fourth of July weekend, Garrett and Sara were in a car when he pulled a handgun from the glovebox and said that he was going to shoot himself. Sara hid the weapon for a time.
If he ever again handled a gun after drinking, Sara should call 911, Tricia recalls advising her daughter.
Seeking help from the authorities is what Sara was apparently trying to do at the end of the couple’s final violent encounter in Bossier City, Louisiana, about a four-hour drive from Fort Worth, at the Margaritaville hotel.
“I think when I told her to call 911 I should have explained to her not to say it out loud,” Tricia says now. “So I have a lot of guilt.”
Before her classes were to begin on a Monday, Garrett and Sara decided to go to Bossier City for the weekend. They spent that Friday afternoon in the hotel’s hot tub, then ate pizza before returning to their room.
There, Garrett screamed at his girlfriend, a guest in a neighboring room would later tell Tricia.
Through the wall, the guest heard noises that sounded as if something was thrown around. Sara said she was going to call 911.
Then, a gunshot.
About 10 p.m. on Aug. 21, 2020, Garrett pointed a gun at Sara, pulled the trigger and shot her one time in the head.
Sara was still alive for a period and was moving around.
Garrett did not try to call emergency services for Sara. He left the room and called his brother, Griffin, and told him that he should have broken up with Sara, according to the factual basis of his later guilty plea to manslaughter that is described in a record filed in a state district court in Bossier Parish.
Garrett walked to the lobby, then outside the hotel and lay on the parking lot ground.
A hotel security supervisor found Sara’s body about 2 a.m. She was on the far side of the room, on the ground by the window.
“I [expletive] up,” Garrett told a nurse at the hospital where he was taken from the hotel.
For Tricia, much grief remains.
“It’s just unimaginable that someone that says they love your child blows their brains out in a hotel room when she’s — there’s no way for her to get out of there,” Tricia says.
“It’s really devastating,” she says. “Sometimes I can’t even find the words to describe it. When your child dies, you die. That life is gone. You know, you wake up every morning and wonder if you’re going to make it to the end of the day.”
Domestic violence ‘all about power and control’
Between 2020 and 2024 in Fort Worth, 14% of homicides were classified by the city’s Police Department as domestic violence cases.
In 2023 six of the 88 total homicides in Fort Worth were domestic cases, according to Police Department data, although the Tarrant County Intimate Partner Violence Fatality Review included one domestic homicide in Fort Worth that year.
The discrepancy is likely explained by the narrow definition used by the review in its analysis and report, mandated by the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, and a broad definition in use by the Police Department. Under the annual review, an intimate partner violence homicide “is an ongoing pattern of abusive behavior that can include physical violence, sexual violence, stalking or psychological aggression by a former or current intimate partner.” To be included, the killing must be “motivated by the offender’s desire for power and control over the victim.”
The fatality review concluded that in Tarrant County in 2023, six homicides met its criteria, the fewest killings since 2016. Each was committed with a gun. Four of the cases were completed or attempted homicide-suicides.
In Fort Worth in 2024, 10 of the 76 total homicides in the city were motivated by domestic strife, according to the Police Department.
A man in late February used a knife to nearly cut off his wife’s head in their kitchen and reported to police that the woman had inflicted the wound herself, authorities alleged. A pathologist concluded Elizabeth Rowland’s death was a homicide and she was found to have defensive hand injuries.
While awaiting trial, Nathaniel Rowland died eight months after the killing. The medical examiner’s office ruled his death a suicide caused by nitrite toxicity.
In April, a man shot his wife to death inside the couple’s house, Fort Worth police said. Her body was found wrapped in a blue tarp in a bedroom. Christopher Robertson admitted during an interview with homicide detectives that he shot Kristlynne Robertson, according to police. He has been charged with murder.
In September, a woman and her boyfriend were in an argument when she retrieved a gun and shot the man to death at a house, police said. Ricardo Bruno’s body was in the master bedroom when officers went inside the house. Jessica Arredondo had shot Bruno and called 911, police said. She also is charged with murder.
Sara Hanson’s experience is in some ways typical of the people who seek help at One Safe Place, a hub of domestic abuse victim resources in the Near Southside section of Fort Worth.
“Domestic violence is all about power and control,” says Ken Shetter, the president of One Safe Place. A family justice center is among its crime prevention efforts, some of which are not connected to domestic offenses. The Fort Worth Police Department’s Family Violence Unit detectives work from the One Safe Place building.
Shetter’s agency provides danger assessment, safety planning, civil legal services and job training to people in abusive relationships.
Intimate partner violence regularly involves isolation, with one person in the relationship convincing the other that they are not capable of supporting themselves, Shetter says.
A significant portion of the cases at One Safe Place involve impeding of breath, often men who strangle a partner.
A victim’s physical separation from a violent partner is critical and the threat of danger remains even when a couple is not living together.
“Abusers have no problem going to someone’s workplace,” Shetter says.
A conviction and a lasting grief
Bossier City police arrested Garrett on second-degree murder. On the eve of trial in November 2023, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Under a plea agreement, Garrett was sentenced to 30 years in a Louisiana prison. He will become eligible for parole after serving 20 years.
Panic visits Tricia in a way it had not before her daughter’s death.
She sometimes struggles to make it to the end of the day. She has found support through nonprofit organization A Memory Grows, which offers retreats for parents who have lost children.
“I walked out of there with just a little bit of myself returned,” Tricia says. “The love you have for your child grows. The memories of your child grows. You focus on the good memories.”
In Quail Ridge Park, near her home, Tricia visits a memorial bench, where a marker reads, “Sara brought a ray of sunshine to us. She will always be remembered for her bright, cheerful persona & the sweet, warm smile with which she greeted life & people she met.”
There is another memorial at the Parker County Courthouse. Sara’s father is a retired prosecutor in that county.
On the evening before the memorial service, Tricia went to see her body privately.
Sara wore a black dress with lace.
“They said, ‘Whatever you do, do not touch her hair,’ so I knew it was a wig,” Tricia says, “and I can only imagine if the bullet went in here and came out here what it was going to look like.” She pointed at the entry and exit points on her own head.
About 45 minutes passed in the funeral home.
Tricia left the room, and her daughter’s coffin was closed.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, chat online at thehotline.org, or locally call SafeHaven of Tarrant County’s hotline at 1-877-701-7233 or One Safe Place at 817-916-4323.
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 1:55 PM.
