Shooting suspect at Texas Tech seen in different lights

SEGUIN — Betty Matthies was among locals quick to recognize the accused, Hollis “Reid” Daniels III, yet unable to reconcile the friendly boy they recall with the charge that he killed a Texas Tech officer last week.

“I know it happened, but I can’t believe it,” Matthies, a former mayor who served four years on City Council here beside H.A. “Danny” Daniels II, the suspect’s father, said Thursday. “My heart is just broken, not only for the policeman but for the whole (Daniels) family.

“Something must have snapped in his head.”

Authorities say Daniels, 19, shot officer Floyd East Jr. on Monday evening at the campus police offices in Lubbock, where Daniels was taken after drugs were found in his dorm by East and another officer.

The two were dispatched to the dorm to conduct a welfare check on Daniels at the request of a suitemate.

Daniels allegedly fled the shooting scene but was arrested less than two hours later after approaching his dorm as officers from several law enforcement agencies swarmed the locked-down campus.

“Hollis Daniels stated to officers that he was the one that shot their friend,” according to a report prepared by Lubbock police.

Daniels was charged with capital murder Tuesday.

Differing impressions

Matthies, who left office in 2012, recalled receiving a warm and polite greeting from Daniels months ago during a chance encounter in a doctor’s waiting room.

“I said, ‘How very nice that you remembered me’ and he said, ‘I used to come to the meetings when dad was on council.’ He said, ‘You and my dad always worked so well together,’ ” Matthies, 83, said. “He was just such a polite, wellmannered young man.”

Matthies theorizes “something must have happened” to Daniels if he committed the crime he’s charged with.

“I can’t imagine the young man I visited with doing that,” she said.

But the police assertions about Daniels didn’t shock Charlotte Boyett, who says she sensed he had issues in the fall of 2016 when she was hired to tutor him by Danny Daniels and his wife, Janis Turk Daniels, a travel writer.

“I’m not surprised at all,” by Reid Daniels’ arrest, Boyett said Thursday. “There was something off about him, that mom and dad had to go to such great lengths and bend over backwards and to try to set him up to prevent failure. He just didn’t seem like he had any motivation to do it on his own.”

Tutor had doubts

Boyett, who first shared her account Tuesday on a Lubbock call-in program on KFYO radio, said she held only two sessions with Daniels, who then was enrolled in an alternative admissions program run by Texas Tech with South Plains College.

Designed for students initially denied admission to Texas Tech, the program lets them live and study at the university while officially enrolled in South Plains College so they can transition into Tech.

Daniels missed several appointments and acted put upon at the two sessions held, said Boyett, so tutoring was discontinued.

“It was almost like he was an undetermined high schooler or middle schooler,” she said Thursday. “He seemed antsy. He never did anything volatile or weird. I just wondered, ‘Why is this kid here in Lubbock?’ ”

Boyett said Janis Daniels, with whom she’d met and exchanged emails, described her son as intelligent but having difficulty adjusting to college life.

“I said, ‘Why did you send him to Tech, so far from home?’ and she was like, ‘I thought maybe it was better if he got out of our area,’ ” Boyett said. “She was very focused and attentive and was really trying her best to make this work.”

Authorities say Janis Daniels on Monday contacted a Tech counseling center to express concern that her son was armed and suicidal. It’s unclear when the call was made, but the message was relayed to police while Daniels was still on the run Monday evening.