Jury finds Simpkins guilty of attempted capital murder in Timberview High School shooting

A Tarrant County high school student who shot a boy who had in the preceding seconds pummeled him in a classroom and also wounded another student and a teacher running to elude the gunfire was on Thursday found guilty of attempted capital murder.

In its verdict, the jury spurned the defense suggestion that Timothy Simpkins did not intend to kill classmate Zaccheaus Selby, who thrashed the defendant in October 2021 at Timberview High School in Arlington.

Simpkins’ defense attorneys had suggested during witness questioning throughout the five-day trial that the beating stirred within Simpkins fear of serious injury or death at Selby’s hand that justified the shooting.

But in a ruling that upset that central defense argument, Judge Ryan Hill, who presided at the trial in 371st District Court in Tarrant County, concluded that self-defense law did not apply in the Simpkins case and the jury should not be instructed to consider that justification.

Simpkins used a .45-caliber Glock handgun to shoot Selby and teacher Calvin Pettitt and graze Shaniya McNeely, another student at the Mansfield district school.

Neither the defendant nor Selby testified at the trial.

After hearing additional evidence in a second phase of trial on Friday, the jury will also determine Simpkins’ sentence. The maximum sentence is life in prison. The defendant is 19.

In a closing argument, defense attorney Lesa Pamplin recalled that a surveillance video recording showed Simpkins did not fire at Selby when her client stood over him in the hallway. Simpkins had earlier fired six rounds from a handgun.

“If he wanted to kill him, he could have,” Pamplin said.

The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office overcharged the case, Pamplin told the jury.

Lloyd Whelchel, a prosecutor, argued in his closing that Simpkins’ failure to fire more rounds with better accuracy should not mitigate the act.

“Don’t reward him for being a bad shot,” Whelchel said.

He showed the jury a dime. The coin is as thick as the distance that, had the projectile traveled it within Calvin Pettitt’s body, it could have killed the teacher by piercing an aortic valve, Whelchel said.

The jury began to deliberate about 9:15 a.m. and delivered its verdict just after 6 p.m.. It took a 70-minute lunch break. The presiding juror sent to Hill four notes, some of which asked for access to exhibits, including photographs and a three-dimensional rendering of the scene.

The precise requests were not clear because only one of the notes was read on the court record.

To find Simpkins guilty of attempted capital murder, the jury was instructed that it must unanimously find either that Simpkins attempted to cause the death of Selby by intentionally shooting Selby with a firearm during the course of committing or attempting to commit the offense of terroristic threat, or that Simpkins attempted to cause the death of more than one person during the same criminal transaction.

Hill permitted the jury to consider aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as a lesser included offense.