A disagreement at Tumbleweeds Sports Bar on Friday night was followed by a pre-dawn confrontation at a north Fort Worth home, where a father was shot dead through his own garage window; now his 24-year-old son is facing a murder charge after telling detectives he fired to protect the rest of the family. Johnathan Hernandez surrendered to officers and was booked following the shooting, which happened at approximately 3:36 a.m. on September 26 at a house in the 8300 block of North Riverside Drive.
Fort Worth Fire personnel arrived at the scene and pronounced the injured man dead, according to nbcdfw.com. The station reported that Hernandez was booked and is now facing a murder charge, and that authorities believe the shooting was an isolated incident because the two men knew each other — Hernandez is accused of killing his own father, 41-year-old Nicacio Hernandez.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Hernandez told two homicide detectives that he shot his father early Saturday at the family home in north Fort Worth. The dispute reportedly traces back to Friday night, when Hernandez had a disagreement with a friend of his father's at Tumbleweeds Sports Bar, near NE Loop 820 and Blue Mound Road; the disagreement was eventually resolved, and Nicacio Hernandez took his friend's side.
A Confrontation That Escalated Fast
The affidavit describes a physical altercation once the argument moved back to the family's house: Hernandez told detectives he punched his father in the head about five times, believing his father was about to hit him. He said Nicacio Hernandez then removed a fixed-blade knife from a sheath on his belt, and Hernandez left the house through the garage.
Hernandez told investigators that while he was roughly 100 yards from the house, he heard a gunshot and believed his father had fired at him. He got a ride to his apartment in Fort Worth, picked up a rifle, and drove back to his parents' house, per the same affidavit.
Shots Through the Garage Window
Back at the house, Hernandez said he heard his father speaking inside the garage and saw him facing away, near the door. He told detectives he believed Nicacio Hernandez was threatening to kill his mother and grandfather, and that his father had declared everyone would die that night. Hernandez said he then aimed a rifle at the back of his father's head and fired multiple rounds through the garage window.
A police crime-scene officer collected five ejected cartridge casings at the scene, and an associated projectile recovered in the investigation measured 7.62 millimeters in diameter, the affidavit states. Nicacio Hernandez died on the ground in the doorway between the garage and the house. Other officers arrested Johnathan Hernandez on Saturday afternoon, and he was interviewed by Fort Worth Police Department detectives Domingo Martinez and Michael Sones.
Detective Casts Doubt on Self-Defense Account
Hernandez has raised a third-party defense rationale, the legal argument that a person can use force to protect someone else from harm. Under the state's penal code, a person is justified in using deadly force to protect a third party if, under the circumstances as the person reasonably believes them to be, they would be justified in using deadly force to protect themselves — though the statutory excerpt reviewed by Texas Constitution and Statutes is incomplete and does not by itself resolve whether any specific shooting was legally justified.
Detective Martinez wrote that interviews conducted during the investigation did not reveal facts indicating Nicacio Hernandez posed an immediate threat to Johnathan Hernandez's mother or grandfather at the time of the shooting. The affidavit did not indicate whether detectives believed Nicacio Hernandez had in fact pulled a knife on his son or fired a gun at him, and it did not lay out a complete account of all the evidence gathered in the case.
What happens next in the case — including any court proceedings, bond status or formal charges beyond the initial booking — has not been established in the reporting so far. Fort Worth police have not indicated whether additional evidence will be released as the investigation continues.
