Columbus jury awards $20 million in fatal family feud over loose cows in dove field
A Columbus jury has awarded $20 million to the daughter of a Harris County man slain by his sister’s longtime partner during a fight over cows trampling dove fields.
The jury Thursday found Michael Neely negligent in shooting George Hale “Bick” Bickerstaff III in the head outside Bickerstaff’s Harris County home, where Bickerstaff had fired a rifle toward his sister Elizabeth Ann “Beth” Bickerstaff.
Jurors settled on this amount to compensate Bick Bickerstaff’s daughter Christina Necole Vazquez-Klecha: $20,765,016.
“We are so happy to have had the opportunity to tell Bick’s story and for the jury who were very attentive throughout the trial,” said Vazquez-Klecha’s lead attorney, Teresa Tomlinson of the firm Hall Booth.
The jury found Bick Bickerstaff shared no blame for the shooting.
The lawsuit filed in 2020 had claimed Neely and Beth Bickerstaff acted negligently in causing Bick Bickerstaff’s death, but U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land dismissed claims against the sister in 2021, finding no evidence she anticipated her brother’s death. That left Neely the sole defendant.
He was the last witness to testify.
“If he hadn’t shot at us, I wouldn’t have shot him,” Neely said Wednesday, when he wept while recalling the confrontation and his longtime friendship with the man he killed.
Earlier testimony detailed what happened on July 12, 2019, when Bick Bickerstaff called his sister around 8 p.m. to complain her cows were damaging one of his dove fields on the swath of land they shared on Hamilton Mulberry Grove Road.
The disputes were frequent, Neely said, as they often had to fix fences to keep the cows confined.
Beth Bickerstaff decided to go see her brother afterward, to check the fence and take him his mail, which she typically collected for him. She and Neely got into her crew-cab pickup and drove the quarter-mile to her brother’s house, where he was sitting on a golf car outside.
As she turned down the driveway, he picked up a .223-caliber rifle and fired a shot that hit the ground close enough to spatter dirt and gravel against the driver’s side, but she kept going, stopping within two feet of the golf cart.
As Beth Bickerstaff ducked, Neely got out and rushed her brother, pushing the rifle barrel up with one hand as he put a 9-millimeter pistol to Bick Bickerstaff’s head and pulled the trigger. The mortally wounded 60-year-old died at Piedmont Columbus Regional two days later.
‘Anything he needed’
On the witness stand, Neely said he had known Bick Bickerstaff longer than he’d know Beth, more than 30 years.
He ran an auto shop, and he and Bick built race cars together, he said. Plus he’d do other jobs, like building a fish box for the back of Bick’s boat.
“Anything he needed, I’d do it for him,” he said.
He and Beth Bickerstaff began sharing a home in 1993, so he and Bick were like family, he said.
They each carried guns, when working on the Bickerstaff land, because wild dogs formed packs that attacked livestock in the rural area, he said.
So it was not unusual for him to take guns with him when he and Beth went to Bick’s home that night. He had a .30-caliber carbine rifle and two .380-caliber Taurus pistols in the truck. Right before he left, he grabbed a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson handgun, and stuffed it in a pocket.
“I just force of habit put the gun on me,” he said.
That Bick had a rifle also was routine, he said: “He shoots stuff all the time.”
He said Bick pointed the gun at Beth when she stopped the truck, and then turned to aim at him.
He began to cry, as he recalled firing the fatal shot with the pistol he’d picked up on the way out the door.
His attorney, Nathan Lee, asked whether he meant to shoot Bick.
“No,” he said.
Was he scared?
“To death,” he replied.
Did he regret shooting Bick?
“Every day,” he answered.
During cross examination, Tomlinson asked if he and Beth enjoyed the farmland more, now that Bick was not there.
“We enjoy the property just as much as we did when Bick was around,” he said.
Beth Bickerstaff testified on Tuesday, acknowledging that after Neely killed her brother, she inherited some of his investment funds, opening a bank account with $282,000. Neely would inherit that money, if she died, she said.
She admitted having been frustrated with her brother and the recurring conflict over the cows, but she had not imagined the violence that ensued, she said.
“If I had known he was going to shoot at me, I would have stayed at home,” she said.
