A Fort Worth teen was in custody Friday in connection with the January fatal shooting of two other teens outside of a home in west Fort Worth, according to jail records.
Fort Worth Jail records identified the suspect as 18-year-old Jakari Harps, who was booked about 3 p.m. Thursday.
He was in the Tarrant County Jail on Friday, facing two murder charges. Bail had not been set.
Harps is accused of being involved in a Jan. 4 shooting that killed 17-year-old Breck Jerod Williams Jr. and 14-year-old Adrian Daniels.
Police have not commented on a motive for the killings, which occurred just before 8 p.m. in a residential neighborhood in the 700 block of Panay Way Drive.
Williams’ family told the Star-Telegram in January that they will remember him as a mature, selfless, loving person who was excited about his future.
Breck Williams Sr. said his son was growing into a responsible adult and had plans of starting a career and getting an apartment of his own while continuing to pursue his dreams of success in the music industry.
Knowing the potential their son had makes the heartbreak of his death even more unbearable, Williams Sr. and Williams Jr’s mother, Verline Leger, said.
His family said they didn’t know exactly why he was outside that home when the shooting happened but that Williams Jr. had some friends in the neighborhood who he knew when the family used to lived in the area. A couple of years ago, the family moved to a different part of Fort Worth, but Williams Jr. stayed in contact with some of his friends he’d made at school and among neighbors.
Daniels’ grandmother Shannon Johnson wrote on the GoFundMe page that he was killed “for no apparent reason.”
Johnson told that her grandson was visiting the house on Panay Way Drive to get a ride from someone when gunfire broke out. Daniels was a freshman on the honor roll at Brewer High School in the White Settlement school district and the oldest of her daughter’s four children, Johnson said.
“This could happen to anybody, and it’s sad,” Johnson told . “I don’t want everyone to remember Adrian Daniels and think, ‘Another young Black man got shot, must be gangs and drugs’… It wasn’t that.”
Daniels sent Johnson a text message hours before he was killed, saying “Love grandma,” she said.
“Telling me that he loved me out of the blue for no reason, because that’s who he is… was,” Johnson told . “He’s going to be missed.”
Tim Arredondo, a resident in the neighborhood, told the Star-Telegram he arrived at home minutes after the shooting after going out for dinner with his family. When he pulled into his driveway, he said, he could see two people lying in the street.
He and his wife got the kids safely inside, doing their best to keep them from seeing the crime scene, then Arredondo rushed over to the victims and began trying to perform CPR on the older of the two, he said. Another neighbor, who Arredondo said is retired law enforcement, also ran over to help attempt life-saving measures until police responded.
When police arrived with guns drawn, Arredondo backed away while his neighbor continued performing CPR until officers took over, he said.
Arredondo said this isn’t the first time a shooting has happened near the same house, but it is the first time someone has been killed, as far as he knows. In a previous drive-by shooting incident, Arredondo said, some of the gunshots hit his house.
He and several other neighbors said they weren’t surprised by the shooting but were heartbroken to find out two teenagers were killed.
The January shooting followed a drive-by shooting that targeted the same house a few months earlier, according to residents. Nobody was injured in that shooting, neighbors said.
According to online Fort Worth Police Department reports, between seven and 10 shots were heard on the block around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 15, and a drive-by shooting was reported around 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 21. Another report of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon was taken in the area earlier in November but the details weren’t available online.