AUSTIN (KXAN) – On Friday afternoon, a Travis County Jury decided to send Endicott McCray to prison for 65 years in the deadly shooting of Teqnika Moultrie on Sixth Street last summer.
During the second day of sentencing on Friday, several witnesses were called to testify. One was San Marcos Police Department officer Kevin Blackwood. Blackwood encountered McCray June 3, 2016 after he stopped him on Interstate 35 South in San Marcos. Blackwood says McCray was driving erratically and tailgating cars. When Blackwood approached the vehicle, he said he could smell marijuana.
After a brief search of McCray’s car, Blackwood found a marijuana pipe with burnt residue, small plastic bags, a wooden grinder, a scale, an airsoft rifle and a loaded .38 special revolver. McCray was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and the unlawful possession of a firearm.
Prosecutors then called Desiree Torres to the stand. Torres was shot in the stomach that night on Sixth Street. Torres says the surgery caused her to lose part of her colon. She was in the ICU for three days and had 37 staples in her stomach. Torres says she was confined to a wheelchair for four months before she was finally able to use a walker.
Torres says the shooting put a lot of stress on her family and has changed her life dramatically. “I am traumatized, I always am on edge. Just going shopping freaks me out if I see too many people,” she said.
The prosecution’s final witness was Sabrina Moultrie. Sabrina had recently married Teqnika Moultrie before visiting Austin last summer. Moultrie was shot and killed on a sidewalk just outside of Voodoo Doughnut on July 31, 2016. Sabrina says the couple was supposed to return to California to celebrate their wedding.
“Instead of a bridal shower, we had a funeral.”
“Instead of a bridal shower, we had a funeral,” she said.
Sabrina Moultrie referred to a watch she was wearing on the stand, saying it has special meaning for her now. “It’s the last birthday gift I’ll ever receive from her.” She says she wears the watch every day even though it is permanently damaged from that night on Sixth Street. “It’s all scratched from that night when I tried to scoop her up off the street after she was shot.”
The defense then called McCray’s wife, Shante Walker, to the stand. Walker says she has known McCray for 11 years and he is the father of her two children.
“My husband is very sorrowful. At the time this incident happened I was pregnant with our second daughter,” Walker said on the stand. “Regardless if we were going to be together, he was always going to take care of our children.”
Walker says McCray was a trash truck driver, working long hours every day to help provide for his family. She says she talks to McCray every day from jail. When prosecution began questioning Walker, she admitted that McCray has never apologized for the situation he has put his family in, nor has he expressed any kind of remorse for any of the victims.
McCray could have received a life sentence.
After the jury made the decision, Moultrie’s family spoke with KXAN. “I think our opinion as a family is that he’s clearly shown a lack of compassion and lack of being a reasonable human being. I think we want a person to feel the pain that they caused. And so hopefully he does feel that. Will he really feel that? I don’t know,” said Timothy Volking.
Volking was walking with Moultrie the night she was shot and killed, he says he is doing what he can to make sure McCray doesn’t impact his life more than he already has. “We weren’t going to let this change who we were from the standpoint of, you know do we check over our shoulder more or less or do we not go out and do things. Right around the anniversary of her death we actually went down to Voodoo Doughnuts, got Voodoo Doughnuts we ate them there and we actually jumped on a plane and came out to see Sabrina that same day,” said Volking.KXAN’s Lauren Lanmon is in the courtroom today, she will have the latest on the trial tonight on KXAN News at 5.