North Richland Hills teen was shot and killed over THC vape pens, warrants say
Three adult suspects and a minor arrested in a North Richland Hills murder case met the 17-year-old victim at a park for a drug deal, ambushed him and shot him, according to their arrest warrant affidavits.
The victim, Alvin Sweet, had a faint pulse when police found him on April 29 slumped over the steering wheel in a Honda Civic that had crashed into a parked vehicle, according to the affidavits obtained by the Star-Telegram.
The responding officer found that Sweet had gunshot wounds to the back of his left calf and to the left side of his torso. Sweet was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, where he died, police said.
A 30-year-old woman who is a food delivery driver was walking back to her car outside of an apartment when she was hit in her left shoulder by a stray bullet, police said. Investigators believe the woman was a bystander and not a target of the shooting.
Based on witness statements and surveillance video collected from the apartment complex, detectives said that Sweet was in Walker’s Creek Park, at 8403 Emerald Hills Way, when he was shot and he drove across a creek bed before crashing, according to the affidavits.
Police found about seven shell casings from a .22 caliber gun, three .223 shell casings and one 9mm shell casing that appeared to be related to the shooting near a dumpster in the southeast corner of the park, the affidavits state.
“Based on the location of the shell casings, it appears there was more than one shooter, standing in an ‘L’ shaped ambush position,” police wrote in the warrant documents.
During an interview with Sweet’s girlfriend, detectives learned that he sold drugs and would deal mushrooms, marijuana, THC vape pens, and sometimes guns, the affidavits state.
On the night of the shooting, at 10:08 p.m., Sweet texted his girlfriend saying he was “going to go do some.” She shared Sweet’s location data to the detectives, which showed him leaving his mother’s house at 10:08 p.m. and arriving at Walker’s Creek Park at 10:24 p.m, according to the affidavits.
Drug deal gone wrong
Communications between Sweet and a person whose username was redacted from the documents began through a messaging app on April 20. According to the data from Sweet’s cellphone, the person asked if he had “shrooms” and “how much for $50 worth of bud?”
Their communication continued in the days before the shooting, discussing various flavors of vape pens, and messages continued throughout the day on April 29, police said. The affidavits stated that the person asked if Sweet was “serving,” a term commonly associated with drug delivery.
THC vape pens were later recovered from Sweet’s car and room during a search, the affidavits state.
At 9:41 p.m., the person Sweet was messaging with sent the victim an address at 8403 Emerald Hills Way, the location of the shooting. After the final message in their conversation — “Is that u?” — the shooting began less than a minute later, according to the affidavits.
Several messages on Sweet’s phone dating back to January included address information for other drug deliveries, police said.
According to the affidavits, detectives used location data and message history from Sweet’s phone related to drug deals to identify 17-year-old Ziquaris Burnette as one of the suspects in the shooting,
An arrest warrant was obtained for Burnette on the offense of murder. During his interview with the detectives, Burnette said there were a total of five people including himself who were present when Sweet was shot.
Burnette confirmed he was the one who communicated with Sweet to set up the drug deal, the affidavits state.
Oscar Macias, 18, was standing at the driver’s side door of the victim’s car with Burnette, according to Burnette’s account. Macias fired the first shot at Sweet with a 9mm pistol because Macias said that Sweet ran over his foot, Burnette told the detectives.
Burnette said that Zackary Garza, 17, fired a .22 caliber rifle at Sweet from the left side of a dumpster near where the victim had parked his car.
Burnette said another person whose name was redacted from the documents was standing to the right of the dumpster and fired a .223 caliber rifle at Sweet.
The fifth person who was with the suspects in the park was a 16-year-old boy who did not fire a weapon, Burnette told police.
Burnette said that after the shooting they watched Sweet drive across the creek bed and crash in the apartment complex parking lot, according to the affidavits.
The suspects’ plan was to steal the disposable vape pens that Sweet brought, to “sell them but not to shoot anyone,” Burnette told police. But when Macias fired the first shot, the others began firing too, he said. Burnette told police that he also had a handgun but did not pull it out.
According to the affidavits, Burnette told detectives that the Glock 9mm pistol used by Macias was at his home and two other guns were at Garza’s residence.
Detectives later recovered a Glock handgun during a traffic stop involving a white Buick SUV after a short police chase and believe it was the murder weapon fired by Macias, according to the affidavits.
Burnette, Garza and Macias each face murder charges. They are being held in the Tarrant County Jail with bond set at $2 million.
The suspects also face charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury, with additional bond amounts set at $500,000, according to jail records.
Police said they also arrested a juvenile suspect, whose name has not been released.