On the Fourth of July in 2020, as his children played outside at a party, Nathan Wallace tried to get his daughter Natalie to come with him when he left to run an errand.
The 7-year-old girl, though, wanted to stay outside with her cousins on the clear, bright holiday evening, her father said.
Four years later, speaking from a witness stand at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Nathan Wallace choked up as he described the last time he saw his daughter alive. While out at a store, he received a call from a relative telling him to come back at once.
“I actually begged for her to come with me,” Wallace said of his daughter. “She wanted to stay with her cousins.”
Natalia “Natalie” Wallace was shot to death in the 100 block of North Latrobe Avenue in the South Austin neighborhood around 7 p.m. by men who fired guns down the block while families gathered and children played, prosecutors alleged. Another man was injured.
Kevin Boyd, 35, and Reginald Merrill, 37, on Thursday began standing trial on murder charges before Judge Joanne Rosado on Thursday, with a full courtroom of Natalie’s family members watching from the gallery. Two others, Davian Mitchell and Terrell Boyd, are also facing charges in the slaying that made Natalie at least the 13th child aged 10 or under to be shot that year.
“She was 7 years old and she was celebrating the Fourth of July as children do,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Jo Murtaugh during opening statements. “It was a summer night, people were outside.”
Prosecutors alleged that Merrill drove the other three down Latrobe before stopping and allowing “three shooters” to exit the vehicle. They fired a volley of shots, Murtaugh said, toward a man who ended up shot in both legs.
“Bullets went down the block,” she said. “Natalie Wallace was struck in her head as she played on the parkway.”
Murtaugh said surveillance cameras captured the car Merrill drove, and that the man who was injured in the shooting identified his attackers to detectives.
Defense attorneys, though, countered that the cameras didn’t pick up any distinguishing features, and that the identifications were rife with bias and flaws.
“This is an absolute tragedy that a young person died,” said Mark Kusatzky, who represents Kevin Boyd. “Convicting or going after the people responsible has to … meet the standards the court system has.”
Because the defendants opted for a bench trial, rather than going before a jury, the judge, Rosado, will render a verdict after hearing all the evidence.
Prosecutors began calling witnesses on Thursday, including Natalie’s father, police and the other shooting victim, who was not cooperative when he took the stand, denying that he had identified his shooters.
Body camera footage, played for the judge, showed a chaotic scene in the aftermath of the shooting, with paramedics attending to Natalie while family members surrounded them.
“I saw a crowd of people and hysterical screaming, as well as a small child on the ground,” a responding officer testified.
Natalie has three surviving siblings, and was set to start second grade at Crown Community Academy of Fine Arts that fall.
