Daniel Perry, the Army sergeant convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protestor in Austin nearly three years ago, was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison.
Perry fatally shot Garrett Foster at a July 2020 demonstration for racial justice.
“After three long years we’re finally getting justice for Garrett,” said the man’s mother, Sheila Foster.
“Mr. Perry, I pray to God that one day he will get rid of all this hate that is in your heart.”
Perry, 36, was working as a ride-share driver on the night of the incident and had dropped off a passenger in downtown Austin, where the protest was taking place. Foster, who was an Air Force veteran, was in legal possession of an AK-47 rifle.
Perry claimed Foster pointed the rifle at him before he fired his handgun in what he described as an act of self-defense.
During the trial, witnesses said they didn’t see Foster raise his rifle toward Perry, who had been stationed at nearby Fort Hood, which this week was renamed Fort Cavazos.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said he would pardon Perry if recommended by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which he asked to look into the case.
Perry was convicted of murder in April. He was given “a fair and impartial trial,” District Judge Clifford Brown said.
“Those who claim that Governor Abbott’s expressed intent is based on politics simply choose to ignore the fact that it was only the political machinations of a rogue district attorney which led to Sgt. Perry’s prosecution in the first instance,” Brown said at the sentencing.
The rally in the Texas capital took place two months after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed in police custody in Minneapolis.
A text message allegedly sent by Perry to a friend days after Floyd’s death read, “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
Perry also allegedly wrote on Facebook before the shooting, “It is official I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo.”
Foster was with his girlfriend, who is Black, at the time of the shooting.