A 30-year old Texas man named Ezekial Gilbert was acquitted of murder yesterday, after a Bexar County jury determined that he justifiably shot a 23-year old escort in 2009. According to his testimony, Gilbert agreed to pay the woman $150 to come over to his home and have sex with him, after he contacted her on Craigslist, and when she attempted to leave his home without making good on her end of the bargain, Gilbert shot her in the neck.
The woman, Lenora Ivie Frago, was paralyzed as the result of the shooting and she eventually died from the injury about seven months later. While Gilbert faced life in prison if he was convicted of murder, his attorneys were able to successfully argue that Frago and her pimp/driver were essentially committing an act of theft, and Gilbert was well within his Texas rights to shoot any criminal committing a “nighttime theft”, according to My San Antonio.
As for Gilbert, he claimed that even with this seemingly strange law and subsequent verdict in his favor, it hasn’t been a very pleasant time for him.
Outside the courtroom, Gilbert thanked God, the Barrera family and the jury for being able to “see what wasn’t the truth” and for the “second chance.”
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“I sincerely regret the loss of the life of Ms. Frago,” Gilbert said Wednesday. “I’ve been in a mental prison the past four years of my life. I have nightmares. If I see guns on TV where people are getting killed, I change the channel.” (Via My San Antonio, H/T to Gawker)
The prosecutors indeed argued that the law in question shouldn’t apply to a guy who initially gave the money to the woman in exchange for sex – an illegal act, of course – but the jury apparently didn’t think that was important enough.
And I guess since this story is already crappy enough, I’ll leave out the fact that the shooting occurred on Christmas Eve. Damn it, I meant to not type that.
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