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Thread: Zamar Kirven Sentenced to Life In 2021 TX Murders Of Jacob Ybarra And Sabion Kubitza

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    Zamar Kirven Sentenced to Life In 2021 TX Murders Of Jacob Ybarra And Sabion Kubitza


    Jacob Ybarra


    Sabion Kubitza


    Zamar Kirven


    Former Mart football player indicted on capital murder charge

    A former Mart High School and University of Houston football player was indicted Thursday in the shooting deaths of two men in April. A McLennan County grand jury indicted Zamar D. Kirven, 21, of Mart, on a capital murder charge in the deaths of Jacob Ybarra, 20, and Sabion Kubitza, 22.

    Kirven was arrested April 18 after officers responded to a shooting at 2 a.m. at a house in the 1100 block of East Texas Avenue in Mart, near the Western Motel, and found Ybarra and Kubitza dead. Officials previously said Ybarra and Kubitza were asleep when they were killed. “There is no concrete motive at this time,” McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said at the time of the arrest. “It is just a real sad deal.” According to an affidavit for the incident, police received a statement from Anthony Medlock, who was renting the house, who said he took a gun away from Kirven after Kirven went into Medlock’s room and told Medlock he was high and had shot two people. Another man, Shatydrick Bailey, told police he had gone to the store and when he returned to the house he heard three gunshots, according to the affidavit. Bailey said he encountered Kirven, who threatened to shoot him, but Bailey was able to escape after a struggle with Kirven, the affidavit says. Kirven fled the scene and was arrested at his parents’ house, McNamara said at the time. According to the affidavit, Kirven had blood splatter on his pants and dried blood on his socks and was not wearing shoes. Kirven played football for the University of Houston in 2018 and 2019 but was released from the program in 2020 “due to a violation of team rules,” according to the Houston Chronicle. Kirven remains in McLennan County Jail with no bond.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/wacotri...ff353.amp.html
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    State not seeking death penalty in this case

    https://mclennan.edoctec.com/McLenna....aspx?id=95010
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

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    Murder, capital murder trials set this week in Waco

    Christopher De Los Santos

    former Mart football player and a 29-year-old Waco man face separate murder trials this week in the McLennan County Courthouse.

    Jury selection in each case was scheduled to begin Tuesday morning at McLennan County Courthouse, following Monday’s Juneteenth holiday.

    Zamar Kirven, 23, will face a capital murder trial in Waco’s 54th State District court in the 2021 shooting deaths of Jacob Ybarra, 20, and Sabion Kubitza, 22, in Mart. Ybarra and Kubitza were teammates of Kirven on the Mart High School football team before Kirven went on to play two seasons at the University of Houston.

    Meanwhile in Waco’s 19th State District Court, Courtney O’Neil Washington, 29, of Waco, will face a murder trial in the 2020 shooting death of Larry Bryant Jr., 50, at Bryant’s garage apartment on Sanger Avenue.

    Zamar Kirven was arrested April 18, 2021, after officers responded to a shooting at 2 a.m. that day at a house in the 1100 block of East Texas Avenue in Mart, where they found Jacob Ybarra and Sabion Kubitza dead. Officials said at the time that Ybarra and Kubitza were killed while they slept.

    Officials said at the time Kirven fled the scene and was arrested at his parents’ house. According to the Kirven’s arrest affidavit, he had blood splatter on his pants and dried blood on his socks and was not wearing shoes.

    Police reported a man who was renting the house where the shooting happened told them he took a gun away from Kirven. The man told police Kirven had gone into the man’s room and told him he was high and had shot two people, according to the affidavit.

    Another man told police he had gone to the store and when he returned to the house he heard three gunshots, according to the affidavit. The second man said he encountered Kirven, who threatened to shoot him, but he struggled with Kirven and escaped, the affidavit says.

    Kirven played football for the University of Houston in 2018 and 2019 but the program released him in 2020 “due to a violation of team rules,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

    Kirven has remained jailed since his arrest. McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens said if Kirven is convicted, prosecutors will seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Life without parole is the only option other than the death penalty for a capital murder conviction.

    Tetens said Kirven has refused all offers of plea deals, maintaining that he will not plead guilty to something he has no memory of.

    Waco police arrested Courtney Washington July 13, 2020, in the shooting death of Larry Bryant. At the time, police reported Bryant was fatally shot at about 5:30 a.m. that day in an apartment in the 2600 block of Sanger Avenue.

    At least two people witnessed the shooting, Washington’s arrest affidavit says. One witness said Washington, known as “Cash,” came into the apartment and “started shooting at Bryan who was sitting on the floor,” according to his arrest affidavit.

    Police interviewed another witness who said he “saw Cash busting through the door and then heard the gunshots, but couldn’t tell if Cash was shot or not,” Washington’s affidavit says.

    Washington has remained in jail since his arrest, with bond on his first-degree felony charge of murder listed at $250,000. The punishment range for a murder conviction is 5 to 99 years in prison.

    https://wacotrib.com/news/local/crim...6e77df397.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

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    Ex-Mart football player guilty of capital murder in killings of two friends, sentenced to life in prison

    By Tommy Witherspoon

    WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Zamar Kirven, who set aside a state championship ring and a promising football career for a Glock 9 mm and hallucinogenic drugs, was convicted Friday of killing two of his best friends while high on LSD.

    Jurors in Waco’s 54th State District Court deliberated about two hours before finding Zamar D. Kirven guilty of capital murder in the April 2021 shooting deaths of Jacob Ybarra, 20, and Sabion Kubitza, 23, at a home they shared with others in Mart.

    Kirven, 23, a star linebacker who played on a Mart state championship team and later played two seasons at the University of Houston, showed no emotion as Judge Susan Kelly read the guilty verdict. Though his wrists were shackled to a waist chain, Kirven bent over and blew a kiss to loved ones as they filed out of the courtroom, which was packed with family members on both sides and other Mart residents throughout the four-day trial.

    Because so many spectators attended Friday’s court proceedings, the judge arranged for some of the crowd to watch final arguments, the sentencing and seven victim-impact statements from family members via teleconference from another third-floor courtroom.

    Eight of the 12 jurors stayed to listen to family members address Kirven about the losses they suffered, with at least three jurors dabbing at tears during the emotional statements.

    Prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Kristi DeCluitt did not seek the death penalty in the case, so Kelly sentenced Kirven to an automatic life prison term with no possibility of parole.

    “For stealing the lives of two young men, justice and the law demanded that Zamar Kirven forfeit his freedom for the rest of his life,” the prosecutors said in a statement after the trial. “We are so grateful that the excellent work of our law enforcement partners in Mart, Riesel and the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office allowed us to get justice for Jacob and Sabion. Our hope is that this verdict gives their families at least some small measure of peace.”

    Austin attorney Kleon Andreadis, of Austin, who defended Kirven with Kerri Donica, of Corsicana, said the case was tragic for everyone involved.

    McLennan County District Attorney Josh Tetens thanked the jury for its service.

    “We know this tragedy affected the lives of so many and we hope this brings some closure to those who lost their loved ones,” Tetens said. “Mr. Kirven blamed others for his heinous acts of violence, but he will now reap the consequences of his actions in prison for the rest of his life.”

    In defense testimony Friday, Kevin Kervin, the defendant’s older cousin, a convicted felon and admitted gang member, told jurors that he killed Ybarra and Kubitza after taking his cousin’s gun away from him. He also confessed to other murders while on the stand.

    “I wanted to keep him out of trouble so he wouldn’t mess his life up like me,” Kevin Kervin said. “I took matters into my own hands. I told him to give me the gun because I didn’t want him doing anything crazy.”

    Kevin Kervin has murder charges pending in Limestone and Tarrant counties and is under indictment in McLennan County on charges he engaged in a shootout with officers who had come to arrest him.

    Calvert and DeCluitt easily discredited Kervin by calling McLennan County Sheriff’s Office Investigator David Johnson, Waco police Sgt. Sam Key, a Tarrant County prosecutor and a Fort Worth police detective in rebuttal. All testified that many details in Kevin Kervin’s confessions did not match the evidence or statements from other witnesses in the murders he tried to claim as his own.

    Under cross-examination from DeCluitt, Kevin Kervin said he was high and drunk when he spoke to law enforcement. He said he killed Ybarra and Kubitza on his cousin’s behalf because “he’s too valuable.”

    “I felt like he was going to the NFL,” he said. “All he had to do is get his life right. I wasn’t going to let him do that.”

    He acknowledged telling law enforcement officers during his confession that Zamar Kirven’s athletic prowess “was the way out for their family.”

    Kirven played linebacker for the University of Houston Cougars in 2018 and 2019 before being dismissed from the team in 2020 for violating unspecified team rules.

    In jury summations Friday, DeCluitt, noting Mart’s rich football legacy, said putting Kevin Kervin on the witness stand amounted to a failed “Hail Mary” pass by the defense.

    “Everything he said, except possibly his name, was not true,” she said, adding that if Kevin Kervin was trying to protect his younger cousin from going to prison, he probably shouldn’t have said he killed Ybarra and Kubitza with Zamar Kervin’s gun, which had Zamar Kervin’s DNA on it.

    Shatydrick “Woola” Bailey, a two-way star on two of Mart’s state championship teams, testified Wednesday that the East Texas Avenue home that Kirven was sharing with Ybarra, Kubitza, Ybarra’s parents and two other relatives was a gathering spot for him and his friends. They frequently would hang out there, smoke marijuana and play video games, he said.

    On the evening before the shootings, Kirven, Kubitza and Ybarra said they were going to Mexia to get some acid, also known as LSD. Bailey didn’t go but came back later. He walked to a store about 1 a.m. to get something to eat and said he heard what he thought were gunshots on his way back to the house.

    When he returned, he said a paranoid Kirven put a gun to his head and asked if he was trying to set him up to be robbed.

    He said he ran from the home after struggling with Kirven out of fear that Kirven, who was acting “out of his head,” would kill him. He found out later that morning his friends were dead, he said.

    Judge Kelly instructed the jury that voluntary intoxication is not a defense in the commission of a crime.

    https://www.kwtx.com/2023/06/23/brea...outputType=amp
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

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