Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he’s “working as swiftly” as possible to pardon a U.S. Army sergeant who was just convicted Friday of murdering a Black Lives Matter activist in 2020 just blocks from the Texas state Capitol building. The move comes after an Austin jury heard evidence in an eight-day trial, deliberated for 17 hours, before it convicted Daniel Perry of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for fatally shooting 28-year-old Garrett Foster, who was an Air
Perry was working as a ride-share driver when he drove his car into the protest, after he had earlier tweeted he, quote, “might have to kill a few people on my way to work.” Garrett Foster was pushing his fiancée’s wheelchair and was legally carrying an AK-47 rifle at the protest, when Foster shot him four times with his .357 Magnum pistol, later telling police Foster did not point his rifle at him, but, quote, “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me,” he said.
Garrett Foster, the murder victim, and his fiancée, Whitney Mitchell, had been together since they were 17 years old. Foster became one of Mitchell’s primary caretakers when she went into septic shock at the age of 19 and lost all four of her limbs. Mitchell’s mother, Patricia Kirven, called Foster her daughter’s fifth
— source democracynow.org | Apr 11, 2023