Left: Allen Dale Edwards; Right: Keyanna Cherrell Gardiner. (Harris County District Attorney’s Office)
A Texas man will spend several decades in prison for the vigilantism-influenced murder of his ex-wife, jurors determined this week.
Allen Dale Edwards, 44, was found guilty and sentenced to 46 years in prison by a jury late Tuesday, Oct. 31, Harris County court records obtained by Law&Crime show.
“Domestic violence can take a lot of different forms, but too often we see it escalate into murder,” Harris District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement provided to Law&Crime. “There is absolutely no reason this man’s ex-wife and the mother of his children should be dead.”
Edwards and his ex-wife had two children together. They were divorced and had been living apart for more than three years. The one-time couple had what prosecutors called “an acrimonious relationship” that included disputes over child custody.
While tensions between the ex-husband and his ex-wife had long been bitter, the fatal and final incidents between the two occurred on March 19, 2016. That night, Edwards shot and killed Keyanna Cherrell Gardiner, 29, after a car chase that apparently caught her by surprise, the evidence presented by the state at trial showed.
Minutes earlier, the victim was fast asleep in the passenger seat of a friend’s car. Around 3 a.m., Gardiner’s friend drove to Edwards’ home in Baytown, a large city on the northern edge of the Galveston Bay and in Harris and Chambers counties.
At the Edwards residence, the victim’s friend is believed to have thrown some kind of aerosol can and broken a window of the house.
The defendant heard the window break and told his mother to call the police. Then, he grabbed a handgun and got into his vehicle, chasing down the two women in the white SUV as they sped away.
The first shot was fired through the glass of the driver’s side window while both vehicles were on Highway 146 heading to the Fred Hartman Bridge – the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Lone Star State – that separates southern Baytown from northern La Porte.
After that, Edwards pulled in front of his targets and abruptly stopped, causing the SUV to crash into the rear of his car.
The man then got out of the car and fired again – striking Gardiner in the chest and killing her on the spot. Next, he walked over to the driver’s side of the SUV and punched his ex-wife’s friend so badly that she had to undergo reconstructive surgery.
“He took matters into his own hands,” Assistant District Attorney Ashlea Sheridan said. “He admitted that he was chasing them down, and he should have just let law enforcement handle it.”
Edwards was almost immediately arrested by a member of law enforcement already in the area of the crime.
The defendant elected to have the jury assess his sentence in the event he was found guilty. After a seven-day trial, they did exactly that.
Under Lone Star State law on aggravated felony firearm offenses, Edwards will be eligible for parole after half of his sentence has been completed.
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