Jury verdict: Two life prison terms for killer of Fort Worth 5-year-old, teen
A jury on Monday concluded that an associate of Four Trey, a Crips street gang set with a pocket of members in Fort Worth’s northside, who fired an AK-style pistol into a garage and killed a 5-year-old and 17-year-old should be sentenced to a life prison term on each of two counts of murder.
Anthony Bell-Johnson, 24, whom prosecutors retried after his first trial ended with a hung jury, will become eligible for parole after he serves 30 years. Last week, the jury convicted him of murder in the deaths of 5-year-old Rayshard Scott and the little boy’s cousin, Jamarrien Monroe, but found him not guilty of capital murder.
In the trial’s punishment phase Monday, the defense offered evidence that Bell-Johnson was ridiculed in his youth after his leg was severed by a train when he was 7 and playing with other boys from his youth football team.
Defense attorney Kevin Rousseau suggested in witness questioning that Bell-Johnson, who is known as One Leg and uses a prosthetic limb, sought comfort in gang membership in part because of taunting connected to his disability.
The jury was directed to consider a term of between five and 99 years, or life, on both counts.
In his closing argument, Rousseau said he was not asking the jury to assess a minimal prison term for the “heinous crime,” but for a period that acknowledged that Bell-Johnson could change and grow.
“Balance justice with mercy. That’s it,” Rousseau said.
The defense called to the witness stand the defendant’s mother, Muntricia Johnson, to discuss the train accident, Bell-Johnson’s high school graduation and his relationship with his son, who was an infant at the time of the homicides.
On cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Bill Vassar asked Johnson about 11 recorded telephone conversations she had with her son at a Tarrant County jail after the guilt-innocence verdict on Friday. She made fun of or disparaged Judge William Knight, who presided at the trial in Criminal District Court No. 2, during a call, Vassar said.
Johnson testified that she was assessing the judge’s rulings on defense objections.
Vassar also asked the defendant’s mother about a reference Vassar said she made in a call to a court employee who was working the trial last week, calling the person “that [expletive] bailiff [expletive].”
Johnson testified that she did not recall the comment.
Vassar did not play recordings of the calls.
Bell-Johnson elected not to testify in either trial phase.
According to prosecutors, Bell-Johnson fired 16 rounds with a diameter of 7.62mm from the AK-style pistol into the garage of a house in far northwest Fort Worth, killing Rayshard and Jamarrien.
Jamarrien, Rayshard and three other people were in the garage in the 8500 block of Steel Dust Drive at the time of the shooting on Aug. 28, 2022. The garage door was mostly up. Jamarrien Monroe’s 18-month-old son, Jhacari Monroe, was grazed in the leg.
Jamarrien was the target, according to law enforcement authorities. Bell-Johnson and a second shooter, Jay Nixon-Clark, believed that associates of Monroe had fired bullets at a house in which Bell-Johnson’s relatives lived, Fort Worth Police Department homicide detectives concluded.
A jury in January 2025 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.
With Rousseau, defense attorney Gary Smart represents Bell-Johnson.
Assistant District Attorney Melinda Hogan represented the state in the case with Vassar, who on Monday argued the jury should, with its verdict, send a message on the value of life.
The length of the prison term, Vassar said, should be an assessment of what it is “worth when you execute two children.“
This story was originally published February 9, 2026 at 5:28 PM.
