Jury deadlocks in trial of man accused of killing Fort Worth kindergartner, teen
From an AK-style pistol, Anthony Bell-Johnson fired 7.62mm rounds into the garage of a house in far northwest Fort Worth, law enforcement authorities allege.
Fifteen ejected cartridge casings were left in the street when, prosecutors argue, Bell-Johnson stopped his fusillade. Rayshard Scott, 5, and the little boy’s cousin, 17-year-old Jamarrien Monroe, were shot to death.
On Tuesday, the seventh day of Bell-Johnson’s capital murder trial in a state district court in Tarrant County, a jury definitively told Judge Lee Gabriel that it was unable to reach a verdict. The judge granted a defense mistrial motion.
The jury deliberated for about 18 hours and 30 minutes over three days.
If the jury had found him guilty, Bell-Johnson would have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, capital murder’s automatic punishment when a district attorney’s office, as it did in the Bell-Johnson case, waives the death penalty.
The state will likely present the case to another jury.
Monroe, Rayshard and three other children were in the garage at a house in the 8500 block of Steel Dust Drive at the time of the shooting on Aug. 28, 2022. The garage door was up. Jamarrien Monroe’s 18-month-old son, Jhacari Monroe, was grazed in the leg.
Jamarrien Monroe was the target. Bell-Johnson and a second shooter, Jay Nixon-Clark, believed that associates of Monroe had fired bullets upon a house in which Bell-Johnson’s relatives lived, Fort Worth Police Department homicide detectives concluded.
Defense attorneys Gary Smart and Kevin Rousseau represent Bell-Johnson, who is known as One Leg. He uses a prosthetic limb. He lost his leg in a train accident when he was a child.
Second accused shooter was found guilty
A jury in January found Nixon-Clark guilty of capital murder. Bell-Johnson and Nixon-Clark were indicted under a statute that alleges that they intentionally or knowingly caused the death of multiple people at the same time.
Assistant District Attorneys Bill Vassar and Melinda Hogan are prosecuting the case.
On the day of the shooting, Bell-Johnson was 21. Nixon-Clark, who was 16, was certified to be tried as an adult after the case was first filed in a juvenile court. Nixon-Clark will serve 40 years in prison before he is eligible for parole.
To homicide detectives, Nixon-Clark admitted firing a white Kriss Vector, a unique semiautomatic gun, once. He was then unable to clear the jammed weapon and could not fire again.
At Nixon-Clark’s trial, Tiffany Daley, Rayshard’s mother, recalled learning of the shooting while she was away from the house with a friend. Her son began kindergarten a few weeks before he was shot to death.
Daley went to Cook Children’s Medical Center and eventually saw Rayshard with closed eyes on a gurney.
“I wanted to touch him,” she told the jury.
The Bell-Johnson case was the second consecutive trial in Tarrant County’s auxiliary court known as the In Custody Court that resulted in a mistrial because of a hung jury.
