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A teen charged with murdering his 17-year-old girlfriend’s grandmother in Texas will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Uriah Urick, 18, has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the fatal shooting of 61-year-old Tammy King earlier this year. He was found guilty of capital murder Friday. Jurors spent about three-and-a-half hours deliberating, according to The Galveston Daily News.
The victim’s granddaughter and Urick’s girlfriend, Tara King, has also been charged in the murder and is still awaiting trial.
During Urick’s trial, his defense attorney, Bill Agnew, admitted that Urick was involved in Tammy’s death, but attempted to undermine the state’s robbery charge. Proving that a murder occurred concurrently with a homicide is a key component of a capital murder charge under Texas law.
He asked the jury to convict Urick on murder instead of capital murder, and described Urick and Tara as “two naïve, drug-influenced teenagers chasing independence, not money.”
“This was not a crime of greed,” Agnew said. “It was a misguided attempt to be adults.”
The jury ultimately sided with the prosecution.
On Thursday, February 6, Tammy was found dead in her home by her boyfriend, who told police that the home had been “ransacked.” He noted that guns from a safe in Tammy’s bedroom were missing.
Investigators later found that thousands of dollars of the woman’s money had been transferred from her bank account to her granddaughter’s Cash App account, court documents revealed. Further records show that Tara allegedly tried two larger transfers — one for $5,000 and another for $20,000 — but they were both unsuccessful.
Detectives also determined that an “unknown person” had linked their account to Tammy’s Cash App account.
The transfers led investigators to become suspicious of Tara and her boyfriend, Urick. Authorities interviewed Urick’s mother, who reportedly said he was suffering from mental illnesses, had a history of self-harm, and had been violent to his family members.
When asked if she believed he had the capacity to carry out a murder, she reportedly told police that he did. She also said that Tara “hated” her grandmother because she wouldn’t let Urick stay overnight at their home.
On February 7, police tried to find Urick at home, but he was not there. His mother told them that she’d been calling and texting him, but he told her to stop calling and not to go looking for him.
Detectives gained access to Urick’s bank account thanks to his mother. They learned that he had received numerous Cash App transactions from Tara on February 5.
The young couple went on the run, offering people money for shelter. They also allegedly tried to sell the guns taken from Tammy’s safe.
One woman who said she had an interaction with the couple said Tara offered to pay her for a ride, and that she admitted to killing her grandmother because she was angry and high on meth at the time, according to court records.
Three days after Tammy’s body was discovered, Tara and Urick were arrested in Laredo, Texas, with the assistance of the Gulf Coast Violent Offender Task Force.
Tara’s trial is set to begin in January. If convicted, she will also receive an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole.
