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19-year-old sentenced to life in prison in fatal shooting of a 5-year-old and 17-year-old in North Texas

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TARRANT COUNTY — A 19-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday after a Tarrant County jury found him guilty of capital murder in the fatal shooting of a 5-year-old and a 17-year-old in 2022.

Jay Shawn Nixon-Clark
  Jay Shawn Nixon-Clark Tarrant County Jail

On August 28, 2022, then-16-year-old Jay Shawn Nixon-Clark and others he knew drove through a neighborhood in northwest Fort Worth, parked the car on Steel Dust Drive and watched a house for over three minutes where teenagers and children were playing in the garage with the door up, according to court documents

Wearing masks and armed with guns, Nixon-Clark and another man got out of the car and ran to the house where they fired more than a dozen shots before speeding away, court documents state.

"They riddled that garage with bullets," Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Melinda Hogan said to the jury. "They unloaded 17 rounds into the garage where five children are playing." 

Five-year-old Rayshard Javon Scott and his cousin Jamarrien Monroe, 17, were killed. Monroe's 18-month-old son was also injured. 

"When [Nixon-Clark] masked up and grabbed a weapon, he knew what he was doing," said Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Bill Vassar.

In the courtroom, Monroe's mother, Tijuana West, said "We can never get back what we lost," but said to Nixon-Clark that he has a family who loves him and "there's a greatness in you that goes way beyond your circumstances." 

Anthony Bell-Johnson, 23, also faces a capital murder charge in a separate trial for the double homicide.

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