A Tarrant County jury on Thursday sentenced an Arlington teen to 40 years in prison for capital murder and attempted capital murder in a March shooting that left one student dead and another injured at Lamar High School.
The teen pleaded “true” Sept. 14 to shooting and killing 16-year-old Ja'Shawn Poirier and injuring a female student on the steps of Lamar High School on March 20. KERA News is withholding the teen’s name because he’s a minor who was tried as a juvenile.
Forty years was the maximum sentence the teen faced for the shooting.
After the sentence was read, Judge Alex Kim informed the shooter he would be back in court just before his 19th birthday to determine whether he would be let out on parole or transferred to an adult prison under the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
That, Kim said, depends on the teen's behavior while he's in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department's custody for the next three years.
"At this point, all I can ask is that you do better and make your situation better," Kim said.
Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lloyd Whelchel told reporters after the trial he hoped the shooter — who hadn’t been emotional throughout the week but began crying during closing statements — felt the gravity of what he’d done.
“I think the community has certainly seen enough of this,” Whelchel said. “And I think their verdict and the swiftness of their verdict sends a message that they won’t tolerate it anymore.”
Some jurors shed tears during the reading of the verdict, too. Defense attorney Lisa Herrick said it was a hard case and knew it wouldn’t be an easy decision for the jury.
“We knew that there was going to be sympathy, certainly, for Ja’Shawn Poirier,” Herrick said. “Our hearts go out to him. We feel sympathy toward him and we did from the beginning as well.”
Video of the fatal shooting looped silently on a court video screen while Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lee Sorrells gave closing statements.
“Throughout this entire trial, we’ve been talking about (the shooter),” Sorrells said. “But this is about more than that. This is about every one of those kids — every one of those kids that should be safe at their school.”
The shooting and its aftermath
The surviving victim — who is also a minor and wasn’t identified throughout the trial — said afterward she agreed with the maximum sentence.
Though she's feeling OK five months after the school shooting, she sees it as history repeating itself.
“I do think a lot more children my age are going to take a couple more precautions to protect themselves,” she said. “It may not be with firearms or any other weaponry, but protecting ourselves with our voices."
The unidentified injured student was the state’s first witness Tuesday. She testified she was attending Venture High School in Arlington, but her school bus route included a stop at Lamar. She was waiting for another bus when the shooting occurred.
Camera footage showed the girl and about 30 other students running for cover once gunshots rang out. The girl said she was grazed on the bottom left side of her face, toward her chin. Though it only took some stitches to close up the wound, she said she’s still dealing with trauma from the incident.
“Thunder is now something that puts me on edge and wakes me up in the middle of the night, just because it sounds so much like a gunshot,” she said from the stand.
Text messages obtained by Arlington police showed the shooter sent his father a message about a shooting at his school at 6:58 a.m. — two minutes after he opened fire. Prosecutors argue he was attempting to establish an alibi for himself. He was arrested hours later on the 1800 block of North Cooper Street, according to police testimony.
Body camera footage after the shooting shows first responders rushing to the steps of the school, giving Poirier chest compressions and checking for a pulse. He later died at the hospital.
Poirier had three gunshot wounds, Steven Hemberger with the Tarrant County Medical Examiner testified. One went through his earlobe, severed a cerebral artery, embedded into his brain stem and stopped blood flow to his brain. Another bullet that entered the left side of his chest likely filled his chest cavity with blood, making it hard to breathe.
Hemberger said he didn’t know which injury occurred first, but both were fatal.
Poirier’s mother Roshone Jacob testified Wednesday that her son was a laid-back kid who stayed to himself, loved football and basketball and hung out with his family and friends.
“If you talk to him, the first thing he’ll do is just smile and laugh, because that’s just the kind of person he was,” Jacob said.
Jacob, Poirier and his older sister are originally from Pontiac, Michigan. That’s where Poirier is now buried next to his grandmother, Jacob said.
Despite only living in Texas for about eight months, Jacob said people always had good things to say about her son. Even now, she said, the community has supported her while she grieves his murder.
“It’s been very hard because I’m technically still trying to wrap my mind around this, and I’m stuck in this nightmare trying to come out of it,” Jacob said.
Shooter’s school and home life
The shooter’s primary assistant principal at Lamar, Teri Williams, told jurors the teen had more than 100 absences during the 2022-2023 school year. Those absences, plus fights with other students, landed him in in-school and out-of-school suspension several times before the shooting.
Williams said the teen’s father, John Porter, was receptive to her advice about his son’s behavior.
But psychologist Monica Jeter, who did a psychological evaluation on the teen, said the boy told her he had a tumultuous relationship with his father, who he said developed a drinking and smoking problem last year.
The shooter also mentioned a group of boys sexually assaulted him in a bathroom in October 2022. He identified the two boys who allegedly did it in a yearbook for Arlington Police Detective Vanessa Barnes.
The boy told Jeter he was upset about being suspended and his alleged sexual assault, which is why he decided to bring a gun to school.
But Barnes testified she did not find enough evidence in her investigation to corroborate his claims of sexual assault. She said he may have been sexually assaulted in the past, but not at the time or by whom he told her.
“Typically, when an outcry is made, if there’s a situation that is of importance that a child feels that they will no longer be held responsible for an incident, they will typically make an outcry so that it turns the investigation,” Barnes said.
Behavior in detention and relationship with family
The shooter remained in detention following his arrest in March. At an April hearing, Judge Kim ruled the teen would be kept in detention after a report showed he had refused to leave his room for breakfast and participate in other activities. His behavior later improved, but Kim chose to keep the teen detained because of the grave nature of the then-alleged offense.
Jury selection in the shooter's trial was originally set for Aug. 18, but it was delayed after he attempted to escape the juvenile detention center. Video footage from that day shows the teen asked an officer for a roll of toilet paper around 2 a.m., but then reached out to hit the officer. He then stole the officer's keys and later flashlight while leading officers on a chase through the center.
Following the trial's delay, the teen's father John Porter was sentenced to 77 months in prison for possessing firearms as a felon — including the shotgun used in the school shooting.
Though the teen lived with his father, the defense had argued his parents had been distant and, in his mother Bertha Olivia Sandford's case, absent from his life since he moved from Louisiana to Texas in 2018 with his father.
But Sandford, who flew from Louisiana to Texas to testify, said she has maintained a close relationship with him in that time and was aware of some of the issues he was having at school.
Sandford said she’s tried to call her son and send him letters while he’s been detained, but Tarrant County Juvenile Services records show he declined multiple opportunities to talk to his mom.
“Even though this is my child, I love him, accountability has to be taken,” Sandford said.
His great aunt Carolyn Jones cried during her testimony Wednesday, telling the jury she noticed him becoming more isolated and withdrawn around October 2022 after the alleged sexual assault.
She said the teen had always been quiet and respectful, and the shooting took his family by surprise.
“I feel guilty that he didn't feel secure enough to talk to me about what was going on in his life,” Jones said. “I feel guilty that I could have done a little more.”
Got a tip? Email Toluwani Osibamowo at tosibamowo@kera.org. You can follow Toluwani on Twitter @tosibamowo.
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