Shooter kissed pendant after gang war vengeance killing, Fort Worth jury hears
Retaliatory homicides of gang adversaries have spasmed for six years in Fort Worth, at times creating a sorrowful rhythm of tit-for-tat killings.
The city police department’s gang intelligence officers began to pay attention to Jaquan Wright in the months after the February 2020 murder of his notorious brother.
Wright, who would become a major participant in the factional violence, eventually pursued a revenge trek of south side Crip-set haunts with an eye toward ascending to the quasi-leadership position that his brother, Javien Wright, held atop their Blood-aligned Ape Gang.
Jaquan Wright murdered two people in Fort Worth 18 months apart, law enforcement authorities believe. Both killings were intended as reprisal.
Jaquan Wright is known as Two Skin, a moniker that nods to his vitiligo skin disorder. The discoloration visible on Jaquan Wright’s legs was among the evidence that police used to connect him as a suspect to the second homicide.
Jaquan Wright’s anger fueled the first killing, in May 2021. Rival, Crip-aligned YTN members dropped a music video that included images of a man urinating upon the grave of Javien Wright, who was known as J-Dub. At a trial last week in a state district court in Tarrant County on an indictment that accused Jaquan Wright of engaging in organized criminal activity and murder, Fort Worth Police Department Officer Chris McAnulty, a gang expert, told the jury that YTN is an acronym for “Young Thugging (expletive).”
Five hours after the release of the video, which, because of the crude grave act, police consider among the most incendiary distrack recordings ever released by a Fort Worth gang member, Jaquan Wright sought retribution at a Crip stronghold.
Upon reaching a fence, and with a second shooter, Wright opened fire outside the Valley at Cobb Park, a complex of 18 apartment buildings where a couple of hundred people live. Anthony Fields was shot in the head and died near a playground.
Javien Wright, the man whose grave was desecrated, was, with a gun by his side, shot to death outside a house in the 1500 block of East Mulkey Street in February 2020.
“He was killed by his own gang member friend,” Fort Worth Police Department Homicide Unit Detective Jerry Cedillo told the jury in Jaquan Wright’s case.
Eastside Latin Kings member David Garcia pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in Javien Wright’s shooting, as did Ty’dra Gwin.
The second Jaquan Wright-linked homicide, in November 2022, was intended to avenge the death two days earlier of Terry Irick, also a member of Ape Gang, which is also known as Bone Crushing Gorillas. Irick was gunned down as he sat in a three-wheeled Slingshot after he was followed to the east side of Fort Worth after leaving Varsity, a since-closed night club in the city’s West 7th district.
Detectives have not arrested a suspect in the killing but they believe YTN members are responsible for Irick’s death.
In a retaliation effort Wright and another man, Ivan Powe, leaned from the windows of a black Chevy Impala and fired pistols into a field on East Robert Street, near Riverside Drive.
Cortney Guy was standing in the dirt lot next to Davontay Guzman, a documented YTN member, when Guy was shot to death. Guy was not a documented gang member, although he had a felony drug sales conviction.
“That’s on Dub,” Jaquan Wright said just after shooting, kissing a pendant on his neck and refering to his brother, according to the account the Impala’s driver, Jerome Hall, gave to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office.
The pendant anecdote, however, was delivered to the jury by district attorney’s office investigator Steve Groppi, who recalled discussions with Hall in which he recounted Jaquan Wright’s participation in the Guy shooting. When the state called him to the witness stand, Hall largely denied sharing information about Jaquan Wright in meetings with prosecutors, committing perjury in the state’s view.
The jury was instructed on the law of parties that holds a person criminally responsible for the conduct of another person if the defendant solicits, encourages, directs or aids the other person to commit an offense. There were two shooters in the Guy and Fields homicides.
Within 10 minutes of Judge Amy Allin reading the jury’s guilty verdict on both counts in the trial’s guilt-innocence phase, a fight erupted in the hallway outside. With a witness on the stand during a hearing outside the presence of the jury, Wright’s relatives rushed from gallery benches to the hall, dozens of sheriff’s office deputies scrambled to the fifth floor and the judge left the bench.
As the courtroom was cleared, observers walked past a woman’s wig on the floor at the vestibule door. Deputies arrested two men and one woman on suspicion of disorderly conduct and interfering with a court proceeding.
From its location away from the courtroom, the jury heard a commotion. Judge Allin denied defense attorney Warren St. John’s motion for a mistrial.
After the hall fight, jurors asked deputies to escort them to their vehicles for the remainder of the trial. Wright’s relatives were barred from returning.
On Friday, after learning in the trial’s punishment phase of Jaquan Wright’s involvement in the Fields homicide, which prosecutors presented to the jury as an extraneous offense, the jury assessed his punishment at two life prison terms. Wright, 20, will serve the terms at the same time. He will become eligible for parole after serving 30 years of the sentence. Before it began to deliberate, Judge Allin instructed the jury in the 297th District Court to consider terms of 15 to 99 years, or life, and five to 99 years, or life.
Assistant District Attorney Danielle Wojciak had earlier in the trial asked McAnulty, the gang intelligence officer, to characterize the acts of Jaquan Wright. The prosecutor argued that evidence showed Wright arrived at the East Robert Street field to hunt for rivals and exact revenge.
“That’s as gang as it gets,” McAnulty testified.
Wojciak represented the state at the trial with Assistant District Attorney Katie Owens.
Defense attorney St. John argued in his guilt-innocence closing argument that Wright simply had nothing to do with Guy’s death. “He wasn’t in the car.”
Surveillance images show two lowered Impala windows but not the features of the people inside.
“You cannot see who’s in the back seat,” St. John told the jury.
“Where’s the DNA?” St. John asked in his closing. “None. Where are the prints?”
Wright chose not to testify.
This story was originally published April 20, 2026 at 1:04 PM.
