Jury gives 40 years in kidnapping, robbery case
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Because the victim in this case has allegedly been threatened to stay silent by supporters of the defendant and related charges are pending, the victim’s name is being withheld for her protection.)
NEW BOSTON, Texas — A man who pistol whipped a Texarkana, Texas, mom and held a gun to her 2-year-old son’s head as he demanded money from her last year was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison by a Bowie County jury.
Xavier Lavar French, 20, pleaded guilty last week to aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping but elected for his punishment to be decided by a jury chosen Tuesday before 202nd District Judge John Tidwell.
“He picked up my child and he told me he was going to shoot me and my child if I did not give him what he wanted,” French’s victim testified. “He held my child the whole time.”
The victim testified that on the morning of June 29, 2019, she had fun making a silly video of herself counting cash which she posted to social media. The money was meant for her rent. After posting the video, she went to her job at a local restaurant and a coworker warned her that such a video might make her a target.
“So I deleted it. It was up for about three or four hours,” the victim testified.
After working her second shift of the day, the victim picked up her son from her mother’s home and went to her apartment on Champion Place. She said she noticed the porch light was out above her door as she fumbled for her keys while talking to her best friend on the phone. Her unit was on the first floor with a front door in a space beneath a stairwell.
The victim said she thought it was kids when she heard the sound of running footsteps until she looked up and saw a man with his face covered. After demanding “all my stuff,” French hit the woman in the head twice with a 9 mm pistol he’d stolen a month before. She fell to the ground, blacked out momentarily, and blood ran into her eyes. She crawled in the dark, looking for her keys, wondering why her son wasn’t screaming.
“He pulled me up by my hair and he kept hitting me,” the victim testified as her breathing quickened and a court staffer slipped a box of tissue onto the table in front of her.
The woman said she managed to get her key in the door as French picked up her son and threatened both their lives. She went to her bathroom where she kept her rent money and other important documents in a fanny pack. She said she told French she would have to turn on the light to find the money and he warned her not to look at him. She tossed the fanny pack behind her and dove into her bathtub, catching sight of French’s face in the mirror behind her as she did.
French’s face covering had slipped down and while he was not a friend of the victim’s, he wasn’t a stranger to her. He visited a friend a few units down from her on a daily basis and often stayed with one of his girlfriends at a residence nearby.
The friend of the victim who was on the phone with her when she was attacked, called police and drove to the apartment complex. She found the victim bleeding on the ground and searched for the victim’s child, who had found safety with a neighbor.
“It was X. It was X,” The woman could be heard saying on Texarkana Texas Police Department Officer Colton Johnson’s body cam footage, played for the jury Wednesday.
Johnson was familiar with “X” and could be heard on the recording saying French’s full name. Johnson also called out to his sergeant when the victim told him in choking breaths that French had pointed a gun at her baby’s head and threatened to kill him.
“Sarge, did you hear that,” Johnson asked.
In her closing argument, First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp noted Johnson’s public service, his years as a patrol officer and contrasted his experience with the surprise in his voice at learning a robbery victim’s child had been held at gunpoint.
French was arrested July 1, 2019, at a residence on Kilgore Street in Texarkana, Texas, testified Texarkana, Texas, Officer Cole Bredenberg. Jollyiah Green testified that she stashed French’s gun, the stolen 9 mm pistol, in her backpack, and walked out of the house on the day French was taken into custody.
Green’s backpack was searched and the weapon recovered but Green was encouraged by French to claim ownership of the weapon. While she was in jail on a theft of a firearm charge, French sent her notes or “kites” urging her to keep quiet and promising they would run away together and marry after he beat the charges and sued over his arrest.
Kierra Forte, the mother of French’s child, testified reluctantly that French has pitted her and Green against each other for some time. When Forte refused to fight Green earlier this year, French hit her with a bat, his fists and left bite marks on her back, Forte said.
Bowie County Juvenile Probation Officer Patty Mason and Adult Probation Officer Wallace Revalee testified that French was unsuccessful and unwilling to comply with probations in the past.
Assistant Public Defender Clayton Haas asked the jury for mercy and pointed out that French accepted responsibility by pleading guilty to his crimes.
Crisp told the jury that French has shown he is a danger.
“Xavier French pistol whipped a young mother who’s out working because he wanted something for nothing. He held a gun on a baby. Ask yourselves what kind of person makes that decision,” Crisp said in closing. “It was evil and cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.”