HOUSTON – The trial for the man accused of murdering a Baytown mom on Mother’s Day in 2016 started on Tuesday.
Byron Collins is charged in the death of 50-year-old Nataliya Shal. Investigators connected Collins to the case through DNA and a cigarette butt at the scene.
Multiple people testified Tuesday, including Shal’s husband, David Englerth.
Englerth testified that he was in California at the time of Shal’s death working as a truck driver.
Defense attorney Danny Easterling asked Englerth while on the stand if he killed his wife.
“No, sir. I did not,” he said. “I loved my wife.”
Investigators said DNA from the Lakes of Madera Apartments came back in 2017 as a close match to an inmate in the Texas Prison System.
Police identified Byron Collins as that inmate’s brother and began watching Collins. Baytown police said they eventually picked up one of Collins’ discarded cigarette butts. Authorities claim the DNA from that cigarette matched the DNA found on the victim.
Englerth did not speak with KPRC 2′s Rilwan Balogun after testifying because he might be called back to testify in the trial.
However, KPRC 2 did speak with him following his wife’s death.
“I bought her Mother’s Day flowers on the fourth,” Englerth said in 2016. “Which was four days before Mother’s Day. Those flowers were still sitting on the table when all this happened.”
Shal was stabbed to death. Investigators say there was also evidence of sexual assault.
Months after the incident, police shared a sketch of a possible suspect.
The person who helped a forensic sketch artist come up with the image was Shal’s neighbor, who also testified.
“What I remembered is his eyes,” the witness said. “Very large eyes.”
The neighbor said she lived above Shal and saw her hours before her death as she was leaving her apartment.
She testified Shal was sitting on the porch with a man she had not seen before.
“I had this very feeling that something was off,” said the witness.
The 31-year-old witness recalled texting her boyfriend about her uneasy feeling.
When the defense team questioned the witness, they stated at no time through the years did the witness ever tell police she had an “overwhelming feeling” about the man she saw with Shal.
“But I did text my boyfriend,” the witness said.
The trial should wrap up in a matter of days.