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Derrick Lamont Bailey Jr
A Killeen man will have to spend a few more years behind bars after a Bell County district court judge sentenced him for his role in a 2016 kidnapping outside the Harker Heights movie theater.
During a sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Derrick Lamont Bailey, 30, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on a first-degree felony charge of aggravated kidnapping, according to Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza.
Judge John Gauntt, who presides over the 27th Judicial District Court, sentenced Bailey. Bailey was found guilty by a jury after a trial in May.
He already has served more than half of his sentence because he was booked into the Bell County Jail on Feb. 9, 2017.
Along with two co-defendants, Bailey was indicted in 2017 on a charge of aggravated kidnapping after police said they abducted a girl from the Cinemark movie theater in Harker Heights on Nov. 12, 2016. The girl was 7 years old at the time.
Heights police said that Bailey pointed a handgun at the father of the girl who was kidnapped and drove the vehicle used in the kidnapping.
One of the other co-defendants in the case is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison. On Oct. 11, 2018, after a trial in which he represented himself, Tutankhamun Holt was convicted of a first-degree felony charge of aggravated kidnapping.
Holt was married to the girl’s mother, Bobbi Battishia White. White, 42, has been held in the Bell County Jail since March 14, 2017. Many jury trials have been set in her case through the years. Her case now is set for trial on Aug. 15.
The girl’s father, Michael Rogers, who was married to White for five years, testified during the trial in May. He said that Holt beat him severely while White took the girl and placed her in a car. At that point, Rogers said that Holt stopped beating him and Rogers went toward the car where his daughter was located. He said that Bailey then pointed a handgun at him.
An Amber Alert was issued and the girl was found in an abandoned house in Alabama a few days later.
Rogers and White have a long history of custody battles over the child, court records show.
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(1) comment
10 miserly yrs, sorry justice system....he should get a minimum of 25
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