Family shares grief, anger as Fort Worth shooting victim is remembered
It’s Saturday evening, and a group of women are working to tie shiny Mylar balloons to a bench at a park off of East Berry Street in Fort Worth.
The balloons spell out the name “Cody,” for Cody Davontae Scott, who was shot dead as he left a nearby gas station on Monday, Aug. 18. Two of the balloons come untied from the bench and drift away in the humid breeze; one of the women jokes that it’s Scott, urging the group to get the party started.
Scott, 32, left his home at around 1:50 p.m. Monday after talking with his wife, Shayla Jordan, about getting her a new car, she told the Star-Telegram last week. By Wednesday morning, Jordan was a widow.
Christopher Jerome Blanton Jr., 29, a local country singer known by the stage name C’ing Jerome, was initially arrested on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Star-Telegram previously reported. The charge was upgraded to murder after Scott died the next day.
Blanton told homicide detectives that he had fired at Scott’s car as it sat next to him in traffic because he believed Scott had been following him and had pointed a pistol at him, according to an affidavit supporting his arrest. A friend of Blanton’s who witnessed the shooting refuted that account, telling detectives he hadn’t seen Scott with a gun and that he wasn’t sure why Blanton shot at the vehicle.
Blanton was released from jail on a $180,000 bond last Thursday, the Star-Telegram previously reported.
At the balloon release honoring his son, Jeffrey Scott expressed frustration at Blanton’s bond, which he thought was both too low and racially biased. If Blanton had shot a white person, Jeffrey Scott said, his bond “would have been at least half a million.”
“Our people downtown who we vote and elect for?” Scott said. “They’re not going to apply the law to everybody, whether it’s a bond or whatever. Treat everybody the same.”
Amid the grief, Scott said, he’s grateful to God for giving him one last chance to talk to his son. A little over an hour before the shooting, they had pulled up next to each other in traffic, rolled down their windows and had a brief conversation. At the end, Jeffrey Scott told his son he would see him in a couple of hours.
Scott said he is also feeling driven by the tragedy and the cause of justice for his son.
“I’m not gonna let up,” he told the Star-Telegram. “I’ll be going to every court hearing, everything I got to do, if I got to call the DA every day, then that’s what we’re going to do.”
As for Jordan, she says she’s going to make sure her 6-month-old daughter grows up knowing that her dad loved her and always wanted to make sure she had everything.
“If he was still here, he’d give her the same unconditional love like he always has, from the first thing when he wakes up until he goes to sleep at night,” Jordan said.
This story was originally published August 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM.
