Man who fatally shot girl and her grandmother at birthday party to be executed in April

A Fort Worth man who’s been on Death Row for almost a decade for the shooting deaths of a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother at a children’s birthday party has been given an execution date.

Erick “Truman” Davila, 30, is scheduled for lethal injection on April 25, according to court documents received by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Davila opened fire in April 2008 on a rival gang member at a party where 15 children were eating cake and ice cream on the front porch of an apartment in the 5700 block of Anderson Street in southeast Fort Worth. Queshawn Stevenson, 5, and her grandmother, 48-year-old Annette Stevenson, were struck by some of the 11 bullets he fired, police said.

Stevenson was shot after gathering many of the children into a bedroom after everybody ran inside. Queshawn died of gunshot wounds to her neck and stomach at Cook Children’s Medical Center about six hours after the shooting.

Davila, who was 21 at the time, was captured by Fort Worth police two days later and charged with capital murder.

Four others were either grazed or wounded but survived the shooting. Prosecutors at his trial maintained that Davila was trying to shoot someone else in the area of the apartments as part of a gang dispute. He was convicted after the trial in February 2009.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal arguing that Davila’s lawyers failed to challenge a faulty jury instruction at his trial and on appeal.

Davila argued in that appeal that he only meant to kill one person. He wanted a new trial on the grounds that the jury should have been instructed that it could find him guilty of both murders only if he meant to kill two people.

This report includes material from The Associated Press.

This story was originally published January 21, 2018 at 9:58 PM with the headline "Man who fatally shot girl and her grandmother at birthday party to be executed in April."