Suspect in killing of Fort Worth apartment maintenance man back in jail on bond violation

A man accused of killing a maintenance worker at a Fort Worth apartment building is back in jail after he violated the conditions of his bond, according to court records.

Devin Smith, 29, had been released on April 27 on $150,000 bond. He was arrested in the fatal shooting of 30-year-old Carlos Aybar on April 21. Aybar was a maintenance man at The Marq on West 7th apartments, from which Smith was being evicted.

Tarrant County court documents show that Smith, who was required to wear a GPS monitor and stay at a home other than his former apartment, failed to abide by the rules of his 24-hour confinement.

According to a bond violation notification filed with the court, Smith emailed his community supervision officer Tuesday saying he needed to see his attorney. The officer approved that request.

Smith then said he would need to go to his storage unit and that he would need to go there occasionally, but the officer told him that would not be approved and he needed to go straight to the meeting with his attorney and then back home, according to court documents. Smith went to the storage unit even after his request was denied, the court records say.

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office also filed a motion Monday asking Criminal District Court No. 3. Judge Douglas Allen to reconsider Smith’s bond amount. A hearing on that motion was held Wednesday, and Allen took the matter under advisement and said he likely will issue an order next week on Smith’s bond, and Smith will remain in custody until then.

At the hearing Wednesday, a prosecutor argued that Smith’s original bond amount in the murder case was already “much too low.” The magistrate who set the bond did not have information about another offense Smith is accused of committing weeks before the homicide and did not know about Smith’s income from the sale of a house, the prosecutor said.

About two weeks before the shooting that killed Aybar, Smith was arrested on April 6, when he was accused of firing a gun in the 400 block of Houston Street in downtown Fort Worth.

Smith is accused of firing gunshots in public after being escorted out of Hyena’s Comedy Night Club downtown, prosecutors wrote in the motion. He fired shots from the window of his car on Houston Street across from Pete’s Piano Bar and again at the intersection of University and 7th while driving back to his apartment, according to police and prosecutors..

The shell casings found in the investigation of the April 6 shooting match the casings police found at the scene of the homicide, authorities said.

When arrested in the April 6 shooting, according to the motion, Smith told a police officer, “If I see him he dead, I’m going to shoot him until he dead, I don’t care who I hit.”

On April 27, the same day Smith was released from jail on bond for the murder charge, the district attorney’s office filed a felony charge of discharging a firearm/deadly conduct in connection with the April 6 fired shots.

In his recorded statement to detectives after the homicide, Smith “showed complete lack of remorse for the death of Carlos Aybar,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.

“He said that even knowing what he knows now, including that the victim was unarmed, he would not have done anything differently,” the motion states. “When the Detective asked if he felt bad that the victim was dead, the Defendant responded, ‘No.’ The Detective then asked if someone pushes you two times do you think you are going to shoot somebody who does that again? The Defendant responded, ‘If they push me once, I might get ‘em before the second time.’”

Smith’s attorney, Kobby Warren, contends that Aybar was the aggressor and that Smith acted in self defense when he shot Aybar after Aybar pushed him.

Fort Worth police Detective Joey McAnally testified Wednesday about Smith’s lack of remorse. “There was no interest or emotion,” she said. “This was abnormal. The lack of emotion entirely.”

McAnally said Smith has not been working since he was fired from his job but that he had money from selling a house and had been able to pay his rent. The prosecutor said in cases where a defendant violates the requirements of home confinement, the state typically requests double the previous bond amount but an even higher amount might be appropriate in this case.

Smith’s attorney said any amount over double the original bond would be unreasonable and punitive. Warren said that Smith misunderstood the communication about whether he was allowed to go to his storage unit.

The prosecutor did not request a specific bond amount but said that it should be high enough to “allow Carlos’ family to sleep at night.” Aybar’s mother attended the hearing with an urn containing her son’s ashes.

Smith’s former neighbors were terrified, the prosecutor said.

On April 21, a woman called 911 and reported that she was working in the front office of the Marq on West 7th and a resident, Smith, was arguing with her over an animal control violation, according to a police call log.

The woman reported that an employee, Aybar, had been shot and told the dispatcher that she had locked herself in a restroom and Smith was standing outside the door shooting.

The woman contacted Aybar for help because she was afraid of the way Smith was acting. Aybar was trying to get Smith to leave the office and pushed the suspect, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Smith shot Aybar multiple times, police said.

Smith fled the office to his apartment and was detained by officers a short time later, police said. Homicide detectives prepared the arrest warrant and Smith was transported to jail after the warrant was signed.

The attorney for Aybar’s family, James Trujillo, said the family is considering legal action because he’s found residents who had previously complained to the apartment’s management and police about Smith’s conduct and about his dog, WFAA reported.

“Mr. Smith chased one of the tenants with the pit bull, a young female,” Trujillo said, according to KXAS-TV. “He also allowed the pit bull to bite one of the leasing agents in the building.”

Harassment, threats, drug use and loud music were among the problems that the apartment building’s management recounted when it began an effort to evict him, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. Rather than proceed with the formal, forced departure, Smith agreed to move out, the warrant says.

As his time at the building in the Monticello neighborhood was ending, Smith’s dog bit two people over three days, according to a summary of homicide detectives’ interview of a Marq employee in the warrant. The bites were reported to the police, and on April 21, Smith returned home in the early evening and found on his door a notice left by the animal control division of the city code compliance department. That’s when he went to the building’s office and confronted the leasing agent, police said.