Former TCU student found not guilty of assaulting Tarrant detention officer
A former TCU student accused of threatening to blow up the Fort Worth university’s campus in 2023 has been found not guilty of assaulting a Tarrant County detention officer after not receiving his lunch on time.
The jury gathered at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the 213th District Court to hear the assault case against Ahmad Peterson-Adeyanju. The 27-year-old defendant has spent time in the Tarrant County Jail since he was arrested Feb. 2, 2023, in connection to his alleged threats against Texas Christian University.
Peterson-Adeyanju still faces several charges, including terroristic threat, in connection with the TCU incident. Those will be taken up during a separate trial, according to defense attorney Eric Nickols.
On June 20, 2023, Peterson-Adeyanju was involved in a fight with detention officer Jimmy Villa and hit him in the head multiple times, according to witnesses and video evidence. His defense attorneys argued he was just trying to defend himself against what he felt was aggression on Villa’s part.
“The question will be, does Ahmad lose his right to self-defense simply because he’s in custody?” defense attorney Tamla Ray asked.
The jury returned the not guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberation. Peterson-Adeyanju did not testify during the trial.
Villa was distributing trays of food to the inmates for lunch. There weren’t enough to go around, and Peterson-Adeyanju and two or three inmates didn’t get one. Villa said that he ordered more, but Peterson-Adeyanju demanded his immediately and became increasingly hostile, according to testimony.
Villa said he was at his desk behind a red line which inmates are not to cross when Peterson-Adeyanju approached him about his lunch. He was standing on the line, according to Villa, who said he came over to the defendant so he could talk to him without raising his voice.
Villa testified that he tried to tell Peterson-Adeyanju that more food was on the way, but the defendant insisted he wanted it right then. The two were standing face-to-face at the red line. Villa said Peterson-Adeyanju started poking him in the chest, but there’s no mention of this in the report he wrote about the incident for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department the following day. That part also didn’t show up in the video that the jury watched in the courtroom.
Ray and Nickols argued that Villa started the incident by getting too close to Peterson-Adeyanju and pushing him backwards, a move Villa said was intended to create space between them. Peterson-Adeyanju fought back, and the two ended up on the ground.
Another inmate managed to get Peterson-Adeyanju off of Villa, and the detention officer in the neighboring pod saw what was happening and called for help.
Prosecutors said Villa’s use of force to restrain a hostile inmate was justified.
“At no time is he trying to fight the defendant,” said Assistant District Attorney Brianna Bustamante.
Photos of Villa immediately after the incident show a bruised forehead and a swelling over his left eye. His arms and one knee were scratched due to falling down some stairs while wrestling with Peterson-Adeyanju. The detention officer was evaluated at the jail and then sent to a local hospital for treatment. He was released less than two hours later.
Villa told the court he couldn’t work for five months due to injuries he received and required therapy. Peterson-Adeyanju wasn’t injured during the incident.
This story was originally published December 16, 2025 at 5:15 PM.
