GALVESTON, Texas – A Galveston County jury sentenced Darius Jeriod Geters, of Texas City, to 40 years in prison for the murder of a 15-year-old Texas City student.
What happened
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On March 26, 2023, the teen victim was attending a birthday party at an Airbnb in Galveston along with several other teens and young adults.
Shortly before 2 a.m., gunshots rang out from a car that had pulled up to the party.
Officials said the victim was struck in the head and later pronounced dead at the scene. While the victim was not the intended target, he was the only person struck by any of the shots.
The Galveston Police Department learned that Geters knew multiple rivals were at the party and that his girlfriend was broadcasting the party on Instagram Live.
After a thorough investigation, detectives determined that Geters drove to the party with a modified firearm before driving back to his Texas City home.
During the trial, the defense argued that the State had no witnesses to testify directly that Geters was on the scene. However, prosecutors Tyler Alley and Silas P. Montgomery introduced text messages Geters sent telling others he was going to drive to the Airbnb and shoot at the house.
Prosecutors also showed evidence of Geters’s car on the road, cell tower data tracking Geters’s location from the party at the time of the shooting to his house immediately after, and gunshot residue on Geters’s car.
The jury returned a guilty verdict Friday morning.
“We’ve heard this story too many times before,” Alley told the jury in the punishment phase. “A drive-by shooting, and an innocent kid winds up dead. By your verdict, you can tell everyone that we do not tolerate this kind of behavior here in Galveston County.”