Kendell Jerrell Morris (Madison County Sheriff’s Office) and Robert Cooley III (Legacy.com)
A 26-year-old man in Texas who drove hundreds of miles to kill the man his child’s mother was dating, only to accidentally shoot and kill the wrong man, will spend more than two decades behind bars for the senseless crime.
A Tarrant County jury on Wednesday ordered Kendell Jerrell Morris to serve a sentence of 27 years in a state correctional facility for the 2020 slaying of Robert Cooley III, authorities announced.
A jury previously found Morris guilty of one count of murder for fatally shooting Cooley.
According to a news release from Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells, Morris drove on May 4, 2020, more than 250 miles from his home in Houston, Texas, to a residence in Arlington where he believed the new boyfriend of the mother of his child lived. Prosecutors said Morris made the trip intent on killing the new boyfriend.
“He thought he saw the boyfriend and opened fire, killing Robert Cooley III, 24, who was not the boyfriend,” Sorrells wrote in the release.
Court records obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram provided additional details about the circumstances of the shooting.
According to the report, Morris had never met the new boyfriend in person and only had a basic physical description of the man — that he was Black and had dreadlocks — before making the drive to the Arlington apartment complex intent on killing him. However, Morris and the boyfriend had gotten into several “adversarial conversations” on the phone before Cooley’s tragic death, police said.
A probable cause affidavit penned by a detective with the Arlington Police Department reportedly said that Morris and another man were captured on surveillance footage from a gun store in Edgebrook, Texas, on May 3, where Morris purchased two .223 magazines for an AR-15 rifle.
A witness who police said lived with the boyfriend told police that in the early morning hours of May 4, a 2008 white Nissan Altima was parked in the lot of the apartment complex where the shooting later took place, the Star-Telegram reported. That witness said they saw Cooley walking through the parking lot before hearing several gunshots. When she looked again, Cooley was reportedly lying on the ground, and the white Nissan Altima had left the scene.
Several witnesses reportedly told police that they saw Morris driving the white Altima placed at the scene of the shooting. A short while after the fatal shooting, Morris was apprehended by a trooper with the Texas State Police. Authorities said they recovered an AR-15 rifle from inside of Morris’ vehicle.
The man accompanied Morris to purchase the ammunition and drove with him from Houston to Arlington was initially charged with murder, but the district attorney’s office later dropped that charge, Dallas, Texas Fox affiliate KDFW reported.
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