Retiree, 71, gets 20 years in fatal parking dispute
A 71-year-old retiree has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for fatally shooting a Houston attorney and patriarch of a wellknown Texas City family in a dispute over a disabled parking space.
William Anthony Hall was convicted this week of murder and sentenced Wednesday in the death of James Garza, 67.
The shooting took place on May 31, 2017, in the parking lot of a U.S. Post Office at 4020 Broadway. Garza had gone to get his mail and parked in a spot reserved for people with disabilities. Hall, who had a concealed carry license, confronted Garza, who did not have a disabled parking sticker.
Hall told police he shot Garza because the attorney became physically threatening toward him. There was not any video footage capturing the dispute, Houston police determined. However, a bullet hole in an envelope Garza was holding indicated he was clutching the envelope when shot and “not swinging a fist at Hall,” according to a news release from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
According to the release, Assistant District Attorney Mary McFaden — who prosecuted the case along with Joe Frank — characterized Hall as a vigilante for the dispute over a misdemeanor offense.
“People who carry guns legally have just as much responsibility as anyone else,” she said during the trial. “That license does not give you a license to kill. You still have to follow the law and if you don’t, you’re going to be held accountable just like everybody else.”
Defense attorney T. Edwin Walker could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Born and raised in Texas City, Garza was well-known in the community. A standout athlete at football and basketball in high school, he later was drafted and served in the U.S. Army as a reconnaissance photographer in Vietnam.
After returning home, he worked as a typesetter at the Houston Chronicle and went to night school to earn his business degree at the University of Houston, then a law degree at Texas Southern University. He became general counsel of the Chronicle, a position he held until the Hearst Corporation bought the Chronicle in 1987, his family recalled in the months after his death.
Garza had a successful private law practice and spent his leisure time getting his golf handicap into the single digits, his family told the Chronicle in 2017.