“We don’t fight; we win,” families and community members chanted outside the Tarrant County Courthouse last Sunday afternoon as they called on county leaders for accountability after loved ones died in the jail.
“We came together … because Tarrant County has made it clear that without pressure, there will be no truth, no transparency and no accountability,” said the mother of Anthony Johnson Jr., Jacqualyne Johnson.
Anthony Johnson Jr. died after an altercation with Tarrant County jailers on April 21, 2024. Partial video publicly released by the Sheriff’s Office shows jailers pepper-spray Johnson and handcuff him facedown on the ground before one officer kneels on his back for about 90 seconds. The medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide from chemical and mechanical asphyxiation. Two guards, 50-year-old Joel Garcia and 39-year-old Rafael Moreno, were indicted on murder charges, the Star-Telegram has previously reported.
Anthony Jr., a 31-year-old Marine Corps veteran, lived with schizophrenia, his mother said to the crowd of more than 80 people on Sunday.
Jacqualyne Johnson and Anthony Johnson Sr. at the rally on Sunday, March 1, in downtown Fort Worth. Shambhavi Rimal srimal@star-telegram.com
Jacqualyne Johnson said she took her son to a psychiatric facility during a schizophrenic episode, but they turned him away. “They said he was not a danger to himself or anyone else,” she said.
“If they (the facility) had kept him for even 24 hours evaluation, my son might still be alive today,” Jacqualyne Johnson said.
Later that day, on the evening of April 19, 2024, Anthony Jr. was arrested by Saginaw police .
At the jail, she said, “My son begged for his life. He said he couldn’t breathe twice. And the people responsible for protecting him, the people that we paid with our tax dollars, failed him at every step.”
Anthony Johnson Jr. with his mother, Jacqualyne. Courtesy of the Johnson family
Moreno, who was shown on the video kneeling on Johnson’s back, and Garcia, who was a supervisor, were charged with murder and fired by the Sheriff’s Office. They have pleaded not guilty.
A pretrial hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday, March 3, was postponed and reset for September. Johnson’s family hopes the trial will start in the fall of 2026.
“Two years of delays while the men indicted for my son’s murder sit comfortably at home with their ankle bracelets,” Jacqualyne Johnson said.
After the family filed a lawsuit, Tarrant County has spent over $600,000 of taxpayers’ money to defend the jailers involved in the death of her son, she said.
“It took less than 24 hours to take my son’s life, but somehow it takes hundreds and thousands of dollars, to defend the people responsible,” she said.
Jacqualyne Johnson pointed at the Ten Commandments monument on the right side of the courthouse, and said the meaning of the commandments “is to treat others the same with the same care and respect you want for yourself.”
“So I ask you all, as a mother, what would you do if you saw the death of your child on a video? Would you not fight? ” Jacqualyne Johnson said. “Could you rest at all with the video looping in your mind that me and my husband have to go to sleep with every night when we close our eyes and we see my son taking his last breath?”
Families and community members rallied outside the Tarrant County Courthouse on Sunday, March 1, as they called on county leaders for accountability after loved ones died in the jail. Shambhavi Rimal srimal@star-telegram.com
Jacqualyne Johnson said mental illness is real and it can happen to anyone at any time. “We are not going anywhere. We will not be silent, and we will be here every meeting, every microphone, every election, until Tarrant County has leadership for all the other people who live here,” she said.
“The agony placed on my family is the result of a system that has grown comfortable abusing, neglecting and killing the very people it cannot control,” father Anthony Johnson Sr. said.
“Since Sheriff (Bill) Waybourn was elected, from 2017 to 2025, more than 70 people have died in Tarrant County Jail,” Anthony Johnson Sr. said. “More than 70 families destroyed, more than 70 futures stolen.”
Sheriff’s Office says jail deaths are declining
Waybourn has defended safety at the jail. A Sheriff’s Office report puts Tarrant County’s jail deaths in the context of other Texas counties. The report notes that Tarrant County Jail has a daily average population of 4,300 inmates, with capacity for up to 5,015 inmates. Tarrant County’s 73 inmate deaths since 2017 were less than the 109 in Bexar County, which encompasses San Antonio and has a similar jail capacity as Tarrant County, according to the report.
There have also been fewer inmate deaths in Tarrant County than in Dallas and Harris counties, although those county jails have more capacity — 7,552 beds in Dallas County and 10,466 beds in Harris County, the report shows. According to the report, there were 77 jail deaths in Dallas County between 2017 and 2025 and 140 in Harris County during that time frame.
“These deaths have increasingly been framed as a political issue, but the reality is we’re dealing with a medical and behavioral health crisis,” Waybourn said in the report. “This isn’t just a Tarrant County problem, Sheriff’s statewide are facing the same challenges as they manage a high-needs population in facilities never designed to function as healthcare or mental health institutions.”
According to the Sheriff’s Office, half of all individuals entering the county’s jails have chronic health conditions and about 65% “present with some form of mental health challenge.”
In a January statement noting that the death rate declined in 2026, the Sheriff’s Office said, “The downward trend reflects ongoing efforts to improve medical response, mental health support, and overall care for individuals housed in the jail.”
Families want their voices heard
Cassandra Johnson, the mother of Trelynn Wormley, was at Sunday’s rally holding her son’s football helmet and a large canvas filled with his pictures.
“Trelynn loved football — as long as he was on that field, he was happy, he was stable, and he wore that big Kool-Aid smile,” his mother said.
Cassandra Johnson broke down in tears as she said, “I started driving to Austin to let my voice be heard.”
Cassandra Johnson, second from right, and others protest outside the Tarrant County Jail in downtown Fort Worth on July 25, 2022. Johnson’s son, Trelynn Wormley, 23, died while in custody at the Tarrant County Jail. Amanda McCoy amccoy@star-telegram.com
Wormley, 23, was found unresponsive in his cell on July 20, 2022. The medical examiner ruled that he died of a fentanyl overdose. Aaliyah Lyles, a former commissary employee at the Tarrant County Jail, was arrested and charged with smuggling drugs into the facility around the time of Wormley’s death, the Star-Telegram previously reported.
Lyles was sentenced in 2024 to 10 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony charge of delivery of a controlled substance, according to Tarrant County court records.
Chasity Bonner died in the Tarrant County Jail on May 27, 2024. The medical examiner ruled her death the result of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, or hardened arteries, possibly due to a hereditary disorder. But her family has questioned the cause of death, saying she had no history of heart problems, the Star-Telegram reported.
“I am here because our family has been forced to fight the truth about my 34-year-old daughter at the time, a woman who should still be alive,” mother LaMonica Bratton said. “We were told that she died from natural causes, but nothing about her death has been natural, not the timeline, not the secrecy, not the way that this system has treated her.”
LaMonica Bratton (right) and other family members and friends mourn the loss of Chasity Bonner at a balloon release in a park in east Fort Worth on May 31, 2024. Bonner died in the Tarrant County Jail on May 27. CODY COPELAND ccopeland@star-telegram.com
Allowing someone to die from neglect is not a natural cause, it’s negligence inside the jail, which is a violation of public trust, Bratton said.
A Star-Telegram investigation revealed that three minutes of video was missing from the footage of Chasity’s death.
“So let me be clear, Chasity deserved medical attention. She deserved compassion. She deserved a chance to live and now we, her family, deserve answers,” Bratton said. “We deserve truth and accountability. We will not stop until we get it.”
“What happened to her is not an isolation failure. It is a pattern of neglect, secrecy and leadership that refuses to take responsibility, while families like mine are left to bury our loved ones with no more questions than answered,” Bratton said.
The mothers and several community members hugged each other as they continued to ask for answers about their children’s deaths.
Families and community members rallied outside the Tarrant County Courthouse on Sunday, March 1, as they called on county leaders for accountability after loved ones died in the jail. Shambhavi Rimal srimal@star-telegram.com
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Shambhavi covers crime, law enforcement and other breaking news in Fort Worth and Tarrant County. She graduated from the University of North Texas and previously covered a variety of general assignment topics in West Texas. She grew up in Nepal.