Source: Joe Raedle / Getty
On Sept. 27, 2020, 57-year-old Edward Murray of Fort Worth, Texas, shot and killed 39-year-old Black man Antonio Robinson, a father of three, all because Murray was upset about toys left on the sidewalk in front of his home—and because he’s a miserable old racist, according to Robinson’s girlfriend.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Murray was sentenced to life in prison and a $10,000 fine Wednesday at the 485th District Court in Tarrant County after being found guilty of murdering Antonio, whose children are 9, 3 and 2 years old.
Conviction and sentence for Edward Murray. Thanks to the Fort Worth Police Department for their work on this case. pic.twitter.com/OPNpJ3zVFv
— Tarrant County CDA (@TarrantCountyDA) November 1, 2023
The conflict between Murray and Robinson’s family—which includes his girlfriend and mother of his children, Ashley Lacy—arose over Murray’s intolerance for toys found blocking the way to his home. According to Lacy, Robinson often called their children racial slurs while acting out of frustration over the apparent inconvenience.
From the Star-Telegram:
A sidewalk connected the doors of two apartments that are separated by about 10 feet. Car seats, bicycles and other trappings of life with children sometimes blocked the concrete strip that ran between the units at the duplex in the Berry Street-Stalcup Road area on the east side of Fort Worth. One of the tenants, Edward Murray, was often furious when toys were in his way.
“Stupid (racial slurs),” Murray once uttered to himself as he encountered instruments of joy. The epithet was loud enough to be heard through a door, according to his neighbor, Ashley Lacy. It was one of many times Murray, who is white, used slurs. Lacy lived with her longtime partner, Antonio Robinson, and three children, a 9-year-old boy and two girls who were 3 and 2. The family is Black. Their approach was to avoid the irascible, drunken, racist man who lived next door. They tried to stay out of his way. The back yard was understood to be Murray’s domain. The front was space to be used by Lacy, Robinson and the children.
On the day of the shooting, Murray saw a ball belonging to the children on what he must have perceived as his property and he made the decision to go inside his home to retrieve his silver hammerless five-shot revolver, which he then used to fire three shots at Robinson. It was completely unprovoked.
Neither Robinson nor Lacy had a weapon or made physical contact with Murray when he fired upon his neighbor, Murray told Fort Worth Police Department Detective Kent Bickley in an interview. Lacy and her 9-year-old used a sponge and towels to stanch Robinson’s bleeding. He was taken to a hospital and died there. Murray left as a passenger in a pickup truck and was driven to a home near Lake Whitney where Murray’s sister lives. He was arrested there the next day.
The story sounds eerily similar to that of Ajike “AJ” Owens, a Black mother of four in Florida who, earlier this year, confronted a racist white neighbor, Susan Lorincz, who attacked and called her children racial slurs while shouting at them to get off of her property. The difference, of course, is that Lorincz—who admitted to using slurs and, according to neighbors, had been a menacing Karen to many of the children and parents in the neighborhood—shot and killed Owens through the closed door of her home after being confronted and is claiming she fired out of fear, which is why it’s unclear if she’ll ever share Murray’s fate and be held accountable.
As for Murray, who blamed everything from alcohol to childhood trauma for the shooting, he expressed regret to Robinson’s family during court on Wednesday.
“I feel sorry for the family and the kids,” Murray said, adding that he drank vodka before the encounter. “I’m sorry that I let this happen. It’s not about me. It’s about everybody else that I hurt.”
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