TEXARKANA, Texas–One of three men charged with capital murder in the 2019 death of a local husband and father who was killed in front of his pregnant wife is set to face a jury next month in Bowie County.
Kentraile Collins Jr., 20, appeared before 202nd District Judge John Tidwell with Texarkana lawyer Shorty Barrett and the judge set the case for jury selection on Feb. 14. Collins is accused in the Nov. 9, 2019, death of Craig Garner.
Garner was in bed with his then-pregnant wife and a young child, with another child sleeping in an adjacent bedroom in their unit at the River Crossing Apartments on College Drive in Texarkana, when loud banging roused the family from sleep shortly after 1 a.m., according to a probable cause affidavit. The victim’s wife told investigators she heard her husband exclaim, “What the fuck,” before shots rang out and he fell to the floor, still inside the bedroom, at the foot of the couple’s bed.
Daveon “Shoota” Woods and Cameron Ware were arrested days after the shooting but Collins wasn’t taken into custody until about a week before Woods’ jury trial in August 2020. Woods was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life.
Because Woods, Collins and Ware were 17 at the time of Garner’s killing, they are ineligible for the death penalty. An individual convicted of capital murder committed before their 18th birthday is eligible for parole after 40 years, unlike adults 18 and older who are subject to a death sentence or life without parole if found guilty of capital murder.
Ware testified against Woods, who was identified through testimony and ballistic evidence as the one who fired the shot from a .40 caliber gun that killed Garner.
Collins allegedly was upset at a man he had tried to rob at gunpoint the day before in the parking lot of the complex where the Garner family lived. The man managed to take the weapon away from Collins, who then recruited Woods and Ware to help him rob him at his apartment. When the three then-teens went to carry out the alleged revenge robbery, they went to the wrong apartment and Garner was killed by mistake.
Ware has been in custody on charges of capital murder and aggravated robbery since his arrest in November 2019 with bonds totaling $1.1 million. His case is scheduled for a pretrial hearing next month. Collins has been in custody since Aug. 13, 2020, on the capital murder charge with bond set at $1 million.
Woods is currently serving his time at the Beto Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Tennessee Colony, Texas. His conviction was upheld by the Texas Sixth Court of Appeals in Texarkana in 2021. He will be eligible for parole Nov. 14, 2059, according to TDCJ.
Collins is scheduled for jury selection Feb. 14 at the Bowie County courthouse in New Boston, Texas, with testimony expected to begin the following day.