In a Texas courtroom this week, the leader of a white supremacist gang, Tyler Clark, was unable to contain himself when learning he would spend life in prison and ignored a judge’s orders to quiet down as he interrupted his former girlfriend — a woman he beat beyond recognition — from delivering a victim impact statement.
Clark, 31, had refused to stop talking during this portion of the hearing, addressing the woman directly and when told to stop, he seethed that he had just been sentenced to life anyway, according to Houston ABC affiliate KTRK.
Convicted of aggravated kidnapping and assault of a family member with a previous conviction, Clark’s life sentence is specifically for the assault of the woman. The court allotted 30 years for the kidnapping charge.
Tyler Clark booking photo Montgomery County (Texas) Jail.
After his outbursts in court Thursday, the woman expressed to the jury that this was proof their decision to convict him and agree on a sentence to life behind bars was the right one.
Clark, a resident of Porter, kidnapped the woman, who has not been identified, last year from Harris County and then drove her to Montgomery County, assaulting her the entire way.
Images of her face after she suffered those beatings in the car were shown to jurors as evidence. She was left unrecognizable, prosecutors said.
When they got to Montgomery County, Clark left her in Kingwood badly injured.
According to court records reviewed by Law&Crime, Clark’s criminal history goes back years, including being charged and convicted in 2018 for similar domestic violence and assault crimes. At trial, at least four other women testified against the gang leader, KTRK reported, and admitted there were times in their relationships with him when they questioned whether they would even survive it.
Though police did not immediately respond to requests for records on Friday underlying Clark’s arrest for the 2023 kidnapping and aggravated assault charge, details of the attack were reported by Houston NBC affiliate KPRC in 2022.
Clark and the woman had been arguing leading up to the kidnapping. He was irate with her for wearing a crop top at an event, calling her a “whore,” police said in charging documents obtained by the outlet. The woman left the event and went to a family member’s house to talk with someone about wanting to break up with Clark.
Clark, who was a tow-truck driver, showed up at the home. At some point during the October 2022 episode, Clark attempted to tow her car while she was in the driver’s seat. When she got out, police said Clark threw her inside his tow truck and drove off, screaming at her to obey him as he warned her he would kill her.
Police said Clark used a ” lock out knife” in the vehicle to cut her hair. As she screamed, he told her he would slash her throat and then grabbed a metal tool from the back seat of the vehicle, described as an “L bar,” and beat her in the head, arms and legs. She went unconscious, KPRC reported, and then Clark put her on his lap and started biting her on her back and legs.
The woman was only able to escape when Clark stopped the car at a red light. She fled and hid in a field before eventually flagging down a driver for help.
At trial, Clark’s defense attorney asked that his client’s life not be “thrown away” with the life sentence.
When Texas prosecutor Brittany Hansford heard this, she decided to ask the jurors to see it differently, KTRK reported.
“One of the things that the defense had argued was that putting him in prison for life was throwing him away. My argument, what I was explaining to the jury, was it’s not about throwing a person away,” she said. “It’s about protecting the community, because we have seen the amount of violence he has shown to all kinds of different people, people who are supposed to love him, that he loves. It’s about the fact that we don’t know how many more victims are in the future. It’s about protecting them more than it is about throwing him away.”
An attorney for Clark did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
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