‘I have to forgive you because I don’t want that poison;’ Lindale man pleads guilty to killing two people in 2020

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - A Lindale man pleaded guilty to killing two people in December 2020.

As you arrive at the 241st District Court led by Judge Jack Skeen, Jr., you could see the wave of pink, blue and turquoise T-shirts worn by the family members of Shelby Duarte, a 23-year-old woman from Edgewood, who was killed alongside Timothy Nelson, a 43-year-old man from Lindale.

David Joshua Reed, 41, of Lindale, was arrested for the killings of Duarte and Nelson when Reed ran his truck off the roadway and intentionally crashed into the trailer the couple was living in.

Reed pleaded guilty to two lesser felony charges of murder through a plea agreement. The original charge was capital murder. Reed will face two sentences of life in prison to run concurrently.

Reed will have to serve a mandatory 30-year sentence day for day due to a confirmative finding of “Use of a Deadly Weapon” by the court.

Lindale man pleads guilty(Nahum Lopez (KLTV))

The tension was thick in the courtroom and filled with emotion as the state called the families of Duarte and Nelson to the stand for Victim impact statements.

”David, I have waited for this day for a long time, and I don’t believe you deserve a plea agreement. I don’t think you are capable of understanding because you are a sadistic monster with no heart or soul, do you realize what you have done to us?”, said Mistie Tidwell, sister of Timothy Nelson.

After Tidwell stepped down from the stand, the brother of Duarte, Joseph Eisenhower, was called to make his statement.

”David, you’re a coward and you don’t deserve a plea bargain. You deserve everything that is coming to you. I can’t say what I want, but the hole you put in our family; you’re worthless and evil. In these 30 years you got, there’s nothing I can say but I pray you don’t make it out of those walls.”, Eisenhower said.

After Eisenhower gave his statement, Shirley Thompson, the estranged sister of Duarte, took the stand.

”David, you never meet me. I was her sister. I was her big sister we were estranged for a while, but we’d gotten over it,” Thompson said.

“In the last few months that you took her, she didn’t even have a chance to live her life. When I leave this courtroom, I have to go to work to feed my family, I’ve got five kids and a husband of 10 years, something she will never get to do because you coward, selfish 40-year-old grown man took that from her. She will never be able to do that, and there’s nothing we can do to bring her back.”

After Thompson’s statement, the crowd began to get emotional, and another brother of Duarte was called to give his statement. In the process of getting up, the brother became very emotional and distressed, and he began screaming and yelling that Reed didn’t deserve a plea bargain.

Duarte’s brother yelled that Reed deserved the death penalty instead. At that moment, the sheriff’s deputies and other officials began to approach him and other family members to calm them down and remove him from the courtroom.

Shortly after that, Tabitha Hall, Duarte’s niece was called to the stand to make her victim impact statement.

”I’m Tabitha Hall, I’ve never met you either, David, but I am the daddy that you ask about I am his sister, so I am Shelby’s niece, and I want you to know for myself I have to forgive you because I don’t want that poison that you have to come into me, so if I don’t forgive you today, that’s what will happen. Because of your impulsive act of pure rage and evil and stupidity, you took two lives from us, but you didn’t take them from us because they live forever in eternity,” Hall said.

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