Homeowner Kills Teen Burglary Suspect

FORT WORTH, Texas - A Fort Worth teenager is dead after police said he tried to break into a house and was shot.

The incident happened at about noon on Wednesday in the 1100 block of East Jefferson Avenue.

The homeowner said shortly after he returned home from work he heard a noise at his back window.

The man said he pulled back the blinds and saw a young man with a crow bar trying to pry the window open.

“He was coming in the house. He scared me. I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “I put the clip in the gun and I clicked it thinking that he heard all that.”

But that didn’t work, he said.

“When I raised the blinds he was still there, like he was still coming in. He was almost in then. I didn’t know what else to do,” the man said. “When I raised the blinds up I shot him.”

Police believe that’s when 17-year-old Ernest Morris turned around and jumped over the fence. But he didn’t make it far. He died behind the house from a bullet wound to the chest.

Jacqueline Morris doesn’t believe her son had to die. She wants justice for him.

“He was a wonderful son and I’m gonna miss him,” she said.

Morris said her son played football for Meadowbrook Middle School and Eastern Hills High School. But he seemed to be getting in trouble more often and ended up in an alternative school.

“They said he got a ticket and go to court messin’ up, havin’ fights at school. That’s the normal thing childs do. But other than that he was a good person,” she said.

She wants answers as to why the homeowner didn’t do more to scare him away. She believes her son may have known the man’s daughter.

“I think it was the girl. To visit somebody, I think,” she said. “Some people like my sister, if I don’t answer the door my sister and them go and knock on my window.”

Tarrant County District Attorney Joe Shannon said in Texas homeowners have the right to use deadly force if there is reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury. Self defense laws are complex, and it’s usually left up to a grand jury to decide what’s right and wrong.

At this point the homeowner has not been arrested.

He said the incident sadly changed his life and the lives of the teenager’s family.

“A lot of people say, you know, you’re protecting this. You’re protecting your property. But to take somebody’s life, I gotta live with that for the rest of my life and I know his family has to live with it,” he said.