Jury’s verdict means 95-year prison sentence for man who shot Tarrant deputy
For six and a half hours every Monday, Brent Brown worked an off-duty security shift at a credit union on the east side of Fort Worth in order to add to the income he earned as a Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office deputy.
On an afternoon in late November 2023, Brown was in uniform, sitting on a chair at the end of a line of teller desks. He looked at his cellphone.
From a waiting area, Leland Williams watched a customer, an older man, turn to walk out of the Fort Worth Community Credit Union, leaving Williams as the only person in the lobby. Wearing a red jacket, Williams approached the deputy, lifted both arms and squeezed the trigger of a Smith & Wesson .40 caliber pistol four times.
Two projectiles entered Brown’s body. They tore into his large intestine and chest; one neared his spine.
Gunpowder floated through the lobby air.
The deputy pulled himself from the floor and returned fire as Williams ran out of the credit union’s doors. As a teller activated an alarm and called 911 from under her station desk, Brown writhed on the carpet. He moaned in pain.
At his trial last week, Williams testified that the shooting was motivated by desperation. In text messages on the morning of the shooting, the mother of Williams’ toddler insisted that Williams should send her money and threatened to move with the little girl to California if he did not. Williams was 35. As an unemployed groundskeeper, he could not fulfill the demand for additional financial support.
After receiving the request for money, Williams said, he drank beer and swallowed two pills that he believed were Xanax to soothe his worries about losing contact with his daughter. Soon, a nebulous idea for getting money that had previously been a fleeting thought became palatable.
Williams concluded that he should rob a bank.
“I felt like it was a quick fix to my problem,” Williams testified.
He walked about 10 minutes from his mother’s house to the credit union on Brentwood Stair Road. After less than a minute inside, Williams left. Then, nearly just as quickly, he returned to the lobby. Williams was working up the nerve to carry out a robbery, he said. He made an odd comment to Brown about wanting to speak to him instead of other credit union employees, before returning to a waiting area chair.
Williams skipped a central element of bank robbery. He never demanded cash. Just started shooting.
“Leland, you never even asked for money,” Williams’ defense attorney, Eric Nichols, noted in a question to his client when he was on the stand.
Williams agreed that the attempt did not make sense and explained that his thoughts were informed by intoxication and competing internal edicts from a devil and angel.
Jury decides punishment after guilty plea
Williams pleaded guilty to aggravated assault of a public servant just before a jury began on Tuesday to hear evidence. The task for the jury in the 371st District Court was to assess punishment. The panel was directed to consider a prison term of between five and 99 years, or life.
After deliberating for about seven and a half hours, the jury on Friday returned a 95-year verdict, and Judge Ryan Hill sentenced the defendant. Williams will become eligible for parole after serving 30 years.
Assistant District Attorney Dale Smith asserted that a life sentence would send a message about the way in which the community confronts violent crime.
With a life term, the jury would say “we do not tolerate this in Tarrant County,” Smith said in the state’s closing argument.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn attended a portion of the trial. Also in the court gallery were Brown, his parents and Williams’ mother, sister and other relatives.
Nichols and defense attorney Kelly Meador, who also represents Williams, argued against a life sentence but did not recommend a specific number of years to the jury.
Smith, who prosecuted the case with Victoria Lydahl, was prepared for the defendant to assert he did not intend to kill the deputy.
When Williams suggested that his intentions fell short of lethality, Smith pulled out a blue plastic pistol for a demonstration.
He handed the prop firearm to the defendant and asked him to stand.
“Raise it at me like you raised it at him,” Smith directed the defendant.
Smith won an admission from Williams that such a gun positioning and angle and the distance between shooter and victim suggested that he intended to kill Brown.
Williams began his time on the stand with an apology to the deputy. The defendant testified that he had accepted accountability.
“I’m ready to do my time,” Williams said.
Williams’ mother, Janice Wilson, testified that she raised her children to respect law enforcement officers and was stunned that her son had caused so much pain.
“I just ask: Have mercy on my child. That’s all,” Williams’ mother requested of the jury.
At the start of the mother’s cross-examination, prosecutor Smith picked up on the matter of compassion.
“Ms. Wilson, how much mercy did your son show Deputy Brown?” Smith asked.
When a Fort Worth Police Department crime scene unit officer cut open Brown’s body armor, the officer found a projectile embedded in it.
Brown also testified at the trial, recounting watching the slide of Williams’ gun recoil, believing he may die, feeling as if he was going to pass out.
As he arrived in an ambulance at John Peter Smith Hospital, Brown asked about the location of his phone. He wanted to call his mom.
Brown’s physical recovery took about eight months. The psychological effects continue.
“I still struggle. It’s me versus me every day,” Brown testified.
“I wasn’t going to let a couple gunshots take me out,” the deputy said.
Brown has returned to work in the agency’s fugitive warrants unit.
In a statement after the verdict, Sheriff Waybourn said, “Today’s sentence brings a long‑overdue measure of justice for Deputy Brown, his family, and every deputy who risks their life to protect this county. Deputy Brown’s courage in the face of an unprovoked and cowardly attack reflects the very best of our profession. I am proud of him, grateful for the relentless work of our prosecutors, and firmly believe that this sentence ensures a dangerous individual will never again have the opportunity to harm the people of Tarrant County.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2025 at 12:43 PM.
