Texas school shooter gets 12 years
FORT WORTH — The jury in the attempted capital murder trial of Timothy Simpkins, who shot two students and a teacher inside his Tarrant County high school, on Monday evening sentenced him to 12 years in prison.
After the jury last week found Simpkins guilty in the 2021 shooting at Mansfield Timberview High School in Arlington, he faced a prison term of between five to 99 years or life in the trial’s punishment phase.
Simpkins, who decided not to testify in the guilt-innocence phase, took the witness stand Monday and began with an apology. He referred by name to Pariesa Altman, who was teaching in the classroom in which Simpkins opened fire; Shaniya Mcneely, a student who was grazed; and Calvin Pettitt, a teacher who was shot. Pettitt watched from the front row of the courtroom gallery as the defendant testified.
“I’m truly, truly sorry,” Simpkins said. “There’s nothing I can say to justify my actions. I’m sorry.”
Simpkins, who is 19, did not refer to Zaccheaus Selby, whom Simpkins fired upon six times. Prosecutors ended their punishment case Friday by showing the jury in 371st District Court in Tarrant County surveillance camera video of Selby lying on a landing at the top of a stairwell just after he was shot. He writhed on the tile floor on which his blood was smeared.
Simpkins’ defense attorneys had suggested during witness questioning throughout the guilt-innocence trial phase that a fight in which Selby and Simpkins were involved in the seconds before the gunfire stirred within Simpkins an ongoing fear of serious injury or death at Selby’s hands that justified the shooting.
Simpkins testified that about two weeks before the Timberview shooting, he smoked marijuana inside a car at a Racetrac gas station with three others: Isiah Selby, and Ant and Josh, whose full names he did not use. Either Selby, Ant or both hit Simpkins in the back of the head with a gun and robbed him of marijuana and cash, he said. Selby or Ant pointed at gun at Josh’s head and told him to get out. Simpkins fired a handgun at Selby and Ant as they left in a car.