Guilty verdict in Hurricane Harbor murder trial after gang, self-defense claims
Nearly every element of a group fight near the inner gate at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor was in radical dispute at a murder trial this week.
There was no consensus on who threw the first punch at the Arlington water park at closing time on a June evening in 2021.
No one could agree on whether the brawl of as many as nine young men was limited to fists or if its participants were also kicking and stomping.
Perhaps most critical, there were varied accounts on whether one gunshot or multiple shots were fired during the fray.
It is clear, however, that at the close of a day of teenage jubilance spent flirting with girls, at a wave pool and on water slides, Dai'trell Teal was shot once by a bullet that entered his back. The projectile traveled in his body from right to left, back to front as it pierced his esophagus and left a gaping hole in his aorta, causing the 16-year-old to bleed to death as he laid on a raised plant bed.
The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Office concluded that Teal was not a gang member and was not involved in the fight immediately before the shooting. The defense did not concede that Teal was not in the fight and suggested Teal left the park with at least one documented gang member.
Teal was, prosecutors Lloyd Whelchel and Kobe Landry argued, wholly innocent.
The defendant, Cameron Stephens, was trying to shoot another teenager named Davion Williams, but shot Teal instead, the prosecutors argued to the jury at Stephens' murder trial in a state district court in Tarrant County.
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The killing occurred as one gang member attempted to shoot another, the prosecutors suggested. Stephens was not, according to Irving police, a documented gang member, but he was associated with APE or After Paper Everyday, a subset of YIC, or Youngins In Charge. YIC is a rival of 2200, a gang of which Williams is a member, authorities said.
'He wasn't in the fight, and he was the guy that got killed,' Landry argued of Teal, who had just finished his sophomore year at Martin High School.
The jury's instructions included an advisory on transferred intent, a principle, when applied to murder, that a person is guilty if they cause the death of a person while intending to cause the death of a different person.
After a six-day trial, a jury in Criminal District Court No. 3 on Friday found Stephens guilty of murder and assessed his punishment at 40 years in prison.
The jury was directed to consider a prison term of five to 99 years, or life. Appointed defense attorney Kathy Lowthorp asked the panel to assess a term at the lower end of the range. Whelchel requested a life term of the jury. Stephens will become eligible for parole after he serves 20 years.
Lowthorp, who represented Stephens with defense attorneys Cami Gildner and Shelby Barrett, argued that the killing was justified by self-defense or defense of a third party, Stephens' half brother, who was in the fight when the defendant fired.
Stephens, from the witness stand, on Wednesday testified that he was himself afraid and was in fear for his half brother.
Stephens testified that, as he was being beaten, he went to his car to get a gun he left under a seat, heard a pop elsewhere and fired once, aiming above the fighting group.
Stephens admitted that after firing the gun, he drove from the scene and left the gun in a dumpster. Police did not find the weapon.
Stephens testified that he regretted getting rid of the gun because, he suggested, a toolmark examiner could have conducted a test that may have shown that the bullet pulled from Teal's body during an autopsy was not fired from the defendant's gun.
'He didn't do it, but if he did do it, it's self-defense,' Whelchel summarized his assessment of the defense argument in the state's closing.
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