‘I’m truly, truly sorry.’ Timberview High shooter sentenced to 12 years after apology

A shot student twisted his body on the high school stairwell landing, writhing on the tile floor on which his blood was smeared.

A teacher, who ran after breaking his eyes’ fix on the shooter’s .45-caliber Glock, found he had a wound in his left shoulder and accepted a colleague’s offer of a wad of paper towels to stanch the bleeding.

Timothy Simpkins returned the gun to his waistband holster and left Mansfield Timberview High School in Arlington bound for his grandmother’s house.

A jury on Monday sentenced Simpkins to 12 years in prison. It last week found him guilty of attempted capital murder after a five-day trial.

The jury deliberated on the sentence for four hours and 45 minutes and was considering a term of between five to 99 years or life. Simpkins will become eligible for parole after he serves six years, half of the sentence.

Simpkins, who decided not to testify in the guilt-innocence phase, took the witness stand Monday and apologized. He referred by name to Pariesa Altman, who was teaching in the classroom in which Simpkins opened fire; Shaniya McNeely, a student who was grazed; and Calvin Pettitt, a teacher who was shot. Pettitt watched from the front row of the courtroom gallery as the defendant testified.

“I’m truly, truly sorry,” Simpkins said. “There’s nothing I can say to justify my actions. I’m sorry.”

Simpkins, who is 19, did not refer to Zacchaeus Selby, whom Simpkins fired upon six times. Prosecutors ended their punishment case on Friday by showing the jury in 371st District Court in Tarrant County surveillance camera video of Selby at the top of a stairwell just after he was shot.

Simpkins’ defense attorneys had suggested during witness questioning throughout the guilt-innocence trial phase that a fight in which Selby and Simpkins were involved in the seconds before the gunfire stirred within Simpkins an ongoing fear of serious injury or death at Selby’s hands that justified the shooting.

Simpkins testified that about two weeks before the Timberview shooting, he smoked marijuana inside a car at a RaceTrac gas station with three others: Zacchaeus’ older brother Isaiah Selby, and Ant and Josh, whose full names he did not use. Either Isaiah Selby, Ant or both hit Simpkins in the back of the head with a gun and robbed him of marijuana and cash, he said. Selby or Ant pointed a gun at Josh’s head and told him to get out. Simpkins fired a handgun at a car in which Selby and Ant left.

In the hours after the RaceTrac robbery on Sept. 26, 2021, Simpkins sent to friends text messages that prosecutors displayed on a screen for the jury. A recipient told Simpkins that they should discuss the robbery.

“Nah [expletive] dat talkin [expletive] imma kill em both,” Simpkins wrote.

“Get em b4 they get us,” the defendant wrote in another message.

Simpkins testified he sent the messages during a period of anger and did not intend to carry out the acts he wrote of.

“I was just mad at the time,” he said.

On cross examination, Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lloyd Whelchel won an admission from Simpkins that for about five days before the Timberview shooting the defendant went to classes with a .45-caliber handgun in a holster in the waistband of his pants.

“Just so the jury understands, you carried a loaded gun to school every day for a week?” Whelchel asked.

“Yes, sir,” Simpkins testified.

With Whelchel, Assistant Criminal District Attorney Rose Anna Salinas, the chief of the criminal division at her office, prosecuted the case.

Simpkins said he is a good person, a regular teenager and far from the ruthless perpetrator of extreme violence described by prosecutors. He said he brought the gun to school to protect himself.

Defense attorney MarQuetta Clayton asked her client what he wanted to request of the jury.

“I just ask for another chance,” he said.

Clayton represented Simpkins, as did Lesa Pamplin and Sheena Winkfield.

“Choose mercy, and let mercy triumph over judgment,” Winkfield said in her closing argument. The defense sought a probation recommendation. Prosecutors told the jury a life sentence would be proper.

In a statement to Simpkins after the sentence was delivered, Pettitt said he appreciated the difficulty of the defendant’s apology. “But I’m not ready to accept your apology yet,” the former teacher said. “For the pain and suffering you have inflicted upon the people I love, I’m not sure if I can forgive you.”

Pettitt said he prayed that Simpkins would not be sentenced to life. “Your life is valuable, and you do deserve a second chance,” he said. “But not right now.”

Altman’s English lesson was underway just past 9 a.m. when Zacchaeus Selby knocked at her second-floor classroom door.

Altman opened the entrance, which had been locked under school district policy, and ushered in the 15-year-old who was late to class.

Selby charged to the back of the room.

“He went straight toward Timothy,” Altman testified last week.

The students fought, and throughout Selby held control over Simpkins, who was 18 on Oct. 6, 2021, when the encounter occurred.

Simpkins took a beating, according to the testimony of four eyewitnesses. After they were separated by coaches who had entered the classroom, Simpkins fired six times at Selby, who was struck by three rounds.

Simpkins was a marijuana dealer, prosecutors told the jury in the punishment phase.

Six days before the shooting, Simpkins searched the internet to learn about legal consequences.

“If you at school and someone tries to fight you and you shoot them how much time will you [get],” Simpkins typed on Sept. 30, 2021, at 9:24 a.m., according to a police extraction report on data from Simpkins’ cellphone that prosecutors displayed to the jury.

Simpkins’ feet were drawn close to his torso during the fight. His body was in a ball on the floor, his hands covering his face. He never threw a punch.

Though Selby got the best of Simpkins in the fight, the defendant’s response of handgunfire was unjustified, Salinas said in the prosecution’s opening statement.

In a ruling that upset that central defense argument, Judge Ryan Hill, who presided at the trial, concluded that self-defense law did not apply in the Simpkins case and the jury should not be instructed to consider that justification.

Selby did not testify at the trial.

Surveillance and cellphone video recordings played for the jury showed that Simpkins fired at Selby after Selby pummeled Simpkins inside their classroom.

Prosecutors and the defense disputed whether the fight was underway or had concluded when Simpkins shot Selby.

No witness in the trial’s first phase described what motivated the fight. Its underpinning became clear in the punishment phase.

The terms of a plea agreement that Simpkins declined were described on the court record just before jury selection began, but the state proposal was not audible on a video feed to a room where people uninvolved in the case listened.

The trial included standard difficulties such as when witnesses spoke at low volume and attorneys and witnesses talked at once.

There were also irregular moments.

A juror attempted to ask a question as a photo exhibit was shown to him. Salinas began to scold people in the gallery who laughed at a witness answer to a question. Hill cut Salinas off.

In her punishment phase closing argument, Salinas told the jury the violence had shaken a sacred place of learning and was undertaken by a person without empathy and a cold-blooded heart. Altman and Pettitt described in testimony their emotional tumult. Neither is teaching now because of their pain.

Girls basketball Coach Jeremy Walker was among the adults who headed to Altman’s classroom upon her call for help.

Simpkins began to fire before Walker got inside. The coach ran to an office shared by two assistant principals who were away.

There, Kristi Underwood, an administrative assistant who heard reports of the shooting on an internal radio, followed lockdown procedure and locked the door.

Through a narrow window in the barrier separating them, Underwood signaled to Walker she would not open it for him.

She mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

Walker remembered he had a master key and unlocked the door. It was among the keys that he returned to his room to retrieve before walking toward Altman’s room. The delay meant Pettitt got there before the coach did.

Walker and Underwood now have light conversations about their encounter at the office door. He knows she was following protocol.

As it was happening, they held hands.