Charles Hill found guilty

By Lisa Shapiro

Staff Writer

Charles Hill was found guilty on Nov. 24 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault on a peace officer and deadly conduct during press time. 

After the state completed its presentation of evidence in the Charles Hill trial, the defense began presenting its side on Nov. 24 at 10 a.m., Jackson County District Clerk Sharon Mathis said.  

In the opening day of the Charles Hill trial on Nov. 18, the Jackson County District Attorney’s office called a dispatcher and a Texas Ranger to testify.

Texas Ranger Drew Pilkington talked about some of the investigative procedures that took place on Oct. 5, 2013 and described some of the images that were displayed on a projection screen. Some of the images included gun shell cases, a splatter of blood  and different angles of the residence where the incident occurred.

Hill, 21, plead not guilty to two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault on a peace officer and deadly conduct. Hill was also indicted on an attempted capital murder charge, but that charge has been dismissed, according to Hill’s attorney Larry Sauer of Austin. 

Jackson County Sheriff Office dispatcher Jennifer Chastain told members of the court and the 14-member jury that she followed through with the 911 call properly and followed all procedures. A recording of the 911 call was played and transcripts of

what was said in the call was handed out to the jury and members of the court.

The caller claimed Hill was intoxicated during the incident. Hill and the neighbors had been partying.

Bell said Hill allegedly insulted an 11-year-old girl before he was asked to leave the residence.

On Nov. 19 more testimonies and evidence from Rick Boone, patrol officer of Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and Jackson County Sheriff’s deputy Jason McCarrell were presented.

Boone explained how surveillance cameras work on patrolmen’s cars. He said he was responsible for all of the wiring on the patrol cars. Boone said a patrolman has to manually turn the camera on and when it is turned on the camera has to go through a boot up stage. 

“It’s kind of like a computer, it usually takes five minutes or more to go through that process,” he said. 

He said the system is set up with a hard drive, so if the video is powered on and the lights are not activated it does store on the hard drive. 

“It’s stored in two different places internally,” Boone said. “The regular in car video and if it was recording properly it would  burn to a CD, then that information is also stored on a hard drive. So if something happened to the actual disc you can go back and pull it off the hard drive.”

Jackson County District Attorney Bobby Bell asked him if he tried to extract anything from either the video or the hard drive. Boone said they attempted to pull the video off of the hard drive on Oct. 5 or the next day, but was unable to do so. He said there was either a malfunction or it wasn’t powered on. Boone said not everything was recorded and there was an issue with the hard drive.

“With that information, I contacted WatchGuard Video who makes the camera and they told us if there wasn’t anything on the hard drive there wasn’t anything they could do for us as far as retrieving it,” he said. “They said they could replace it or repair it.” 

McCarrell answered questions about what he did when he came into work on the day of the shootings. He said he went directly to the office to do some paperwork and that he would not have turned on his video camera because he was afraid there might be the potential he would run his battery dead. 

McCarrell said once he arrived at the residence’s home there were four adults that came out in the front yard and talked with him. He recalled seeing Brandon Cornwell with severe bites on his arm from fighting with Hill for the pistol. McCarrell said he turned his high beam lights off on his car because he feared Hill would see him and try to kill him. The complainants, Adam and Valerie Twardowski, told him there was an argument at their home and Hill went up to his truck to retrieve a pistol and started shooting at the house and at them. Cornwell told McCarrell that he took the gun away from Hill. Hill and Cornwell were struggling with a .22-caliber before it went off near Cornwell’s head.

Hill then allegedly went home, got a rifle and came back to the residence to shoot at the house and the residents. 

Hill had wrecked his vehicle sometime in the middle of the incident. McCarrell remembers seeing a male adult in front of the yard in the driveway. He said it appeared to be Hill, so he turned his lights off on his car off. McCarrell grabbed his own rifle. When Hill was shooting at him, McCarrell returned fire and Hill sustained a gunshot wound to his arm, Bell said. 

Adam Twardowski had told McCarrell that Hill had been drinking all day from a fishing tournament.