Army Sergeant Daniel Perry was driving his Uber through downtown Austin, Texas, on the night of July 25, 2020, when he found himself in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest. The mob surrounded his car and began banging on it.
Outside the car, Perry could see Garrett Foster carrying a loaded AK-47. Fearing for his life, Perry shot at Foster five times with his .357 revolver — legally owned and with the proper permit to carry it — and killed him.
What’s rarely mentioned in connection with this incident was that after Perry fired at Foster, other protesters opened fire on Perry’s car. Four shots rang out with three bullets hitting Perry’s car. No one was ever apprehended for shooting at Perry. “Mostly peaceful,” don’t you know?
Perry drove a safe distance away and called the police. After questioning him, the police released him. But Austin’s Soros-backed prosecutor, José Garza, decided to charge Perry with murder and aggravated assault.
After two days of deliberations, Perry was found guilty of murder but not guilty of aggravated assault and now faces life in prison.
Perry was convicted after Garza showed the jury some Facebook posts where the Army sergeant spouted off about the BLM protesters.
Perry’s defense team argued that he acted in self-defense, but prosecutors contended that Perry instigated what happened. They highlighted a series of social media posts and Facebook messages in which Perry made statements that they said indicated his state of mind, such as he might “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.”
A friend responded, “Can you legally do so?” Perry replied, “If they attack me or try to pull me out of my car then yes.”
Did the social media posts really indicate Perry’s “state of mind”? That’s how Garza framed the posts and it’s what the jury believed.
Meanwhile, Texas elected officials strongly reacted to the guilty verdict.
“Self-defense is a God-given right, not a crime. Unfortunately, the Soros-backed DA in Travis County cares more about the radical agenda of dangerous Antifa and BLM mobs than justice,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“This week has shown us how rogue prosecutors have weaponized the judicial system,” he added. “They must be stopped!”
Governor Gregg Abbott went one better. He promised to pardon Perry after a request “hits my desk.”
“Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or progressive district attorney,” Abbott said in a statement. “I will work as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry.”
Garza didn’t bother addressing the self-defense issue in a statement to Fox News. Instead, he pointed to Paxton’s own legal troubles.
“The Texas Attorney General is currently under felony indictment and under a federal criminal investigation,” Garza said. “He should focus on his own legal troubles instead of attempting to interfere with the work of a Travis County jury.”
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It’s difficult to give the total picture of what happened before and during the incident. Perry ran a red light just prior to the confrontation with the protesters and turned down a street where he would have seen the protest blocking his way. Yet he drove right into the crowd and was then surrounded by screaming protesters. Some reports had Foster wearing a mask — not unusual at BLM and Antifa protests, but which might have been interpreted by Perry as a threat. Of course, waving around an AK-47 does not communicate peaceful intent.
This is a closer call than both sides would admit to. In Garza’s case, he couldn’t initiate any doubt about Perry’s intent. And in Perry’s case, his lawyers appeared to do a poor job of countering the very subjective “state of mind” presentation by Garza.
Perry is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and didn’t have nice things to say about Democrats in Austin. The odds are that the jury was largely made up of Democrats, and Garza took great pains to make a point about Perry’s support of the former president.
A sad day for justice in Austin — all things considered.
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