Tommy Wilson

On July 5, 2016, Tommy Wilson, 49-year-old man, was killed outside the Royal Inn and Suites in Tyler, Texas, after a brewing dispute at the motel spilled into the parking lot. The confrontation was tangled in overlapping relationships: one woman’s daughter was dating Tommy, while another daughter was dating Jared Eugene Wilson, the man authorities said pulled the trigger. What began as a volatile argument over property and car keys escalated into a chase, captured on surveillance footage, that ended with a shot that tore through Tommy’s neck and into his chest.

In the hours leading up to the shooting, testimony described a tense scene: Jared had been staying at the motel, and Amanda Hall said she had been allowed to stay in his room with her children the night before. She kept a firearm in a nightstand and drove a Nissan—both were missing by morning. Around the same time, Charlotte Harley drove Rachel Woods to the motel to retrieve Woods’s Dodge, which Jared had been using. When Jared wouldn’t hand over the keys and threatened to damage the vehicle, Woods left to get Tommy, hoping he could help her retrieve her belongings and defuse the situation.

When Woods returned with Tommy, witnesses described Jared running, with Tommy moving fast behind him amid shouted profanity. Accounts differed on whether Tommy had an open knife in hand during the pursuit, but investigators testified the surveillance video did not show Tommy holding a weapon at the moment the gun appeared. After the shot, crime scene personnel collected multiple knives from Tommy’s body—one in a sheath and the others closed—details that prosecutors used to argue he posed no immediate threat when he was shot.

The shooting did not end the morning’s chaos. Evidence described Jared leaving the scene and getting away in the Nissan. Surveillance from a Walmart later showed him stopping to buy clothes and changing shortly after. A Texas state trooper eventually located the Nissan and stopped him; he was described as cooperative during the traffic stop. Investigators later recovered a firearm from the vehicle, and forensic testing linked the spent casings found at the motel and the bullet recovered from Tommy’s body to that same gun.

Jared Eugene Wilson was arrested and prosecuted for Tommy’s murder. A jury convicted him of murder, found he used a deadly weapon, rejected the idea that the killing happened under sudden passion, and assessed a life sentence. On appeal, he argued the evidence did not support the jury’s rejection of self-defense, but the conviction was affirmed by the Twelfth Court of Appeals in a memorandum opinion issued September 19, 2018.