The jury didn’t need long to decide the fate of 27-year-old Shawn Patrick Layton wrapping up the three-day trial by giving him the maximum penalty under the law.
After the jury found Layton guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the December 2017 shooting of Tarleton State University student Jamie Richards, the group of eight men and four women also sentenced him to 20 years in prison, along with a $10,000 fine.
Richards, a psychology major at TSU, was just finishing her sophomore year and was living at the Oak Tree Apartments on the north side of Stephenville when the shooting occurred on the night of Dec. 11, 2017.
Richards, still just 19 years old, survived the 9-mm gunshot to the face that severed her spinal cord, but was diagnosed as a quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair. She is continuing physical rehab at a facility in Houston.
Both the jury’s guilty verdict deliberation, along with consideration of the sentence, took less than 20 minutes each.
“I’m glad he’s getting punishment, but I wish it was longer,” Richards told the E-T after the sentencing. “I was just minding my business watching TV. I’d never met him.”
Richards responded to a knock at her door shortly before 10 p.m. that night. She told investigators that she never saw the shooter’s face because he was wearing a dark “shiny mask,” but she did see the handgun that was pointing at her.
“Richards lay paralyzed but alert for approximately three hours until a neighbor discovered her,” Nash stated. “Richards, unable to move, had attempted to dial 911 by using Siri on her iPhone, but the phone did not dial.”
In explaining the case of mistaken identity, Nash noted that Lau’s apartment was one building over from the building where Richards was living — “in an identically-situated unit.”
“After shooting Richards, Layton fled with his girlfriend, Amber Talamantez, leaving Richards collapsed in her doorway,” Nash said.
“In interviews with police, both Talamantez and Layton revealed they had been using marijuana and methamphetamine ‘for days.’ Text messages recovered from Layton’s phone revealed that, just before the shooting, he told a neighbor that he had ‘a score to settle.’ After the shooting, Layton sent a text that he had ‘taken care of it’ and was ‘down’ for hanging out.”