FORT WORTH, Texas (TCN) — A 19-year-old man will spend the rest of his life behind bars after firing multiple shots into a garage where children were playing, killing a 17-year-old and a 5-year-old, and injuring others.
According to the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, On Jan. 14, a jury found Jay Nixon-Clark guilty of capital murder. He automatically received a life sentence.
On Aug. 28, Nixon-Clark and a group of people he knew drove through a neighborhood before parking outside a house on Steel Dust Drive as teenagers and kids played in the garage with the door up. Nixon-Clark, who was 16 at the time, exited the vehicle with another male. Both were carrying guns and wearing masks. They reportedly approached the home and fired 17 rounds into the garage and fled in the car.
Assistant District Attorney Melinda Hogan said, “They riddled that garage with bullets.”
Seventeen-year-old Jamarrien Monroe and his cousin, 5-year-old Rayshard Scott, died during the incident. Monroe’s 18-month-old son and other relatives sustained injuries.
Assistant District Attorney Bill Vassar argued that Nixon-Clark “knew what he was doing. He was 100% down to shoot as many people as he could that day.”
Monroe’s mother reportedly made an impact statement in court, expressing that her son’s death “changed all of their lives forever,” adding, “We can never get back what we lost.”
Twenty-three-year-old Anthony Bell-Johnson also faces a charge of capital murder in the shooting, but according to KDFW-TV, he underwent a psychiatric evaluation, and his trial date has not yet been set.