The daughter of Scotty Jackson says the court outcome leaves her angry even as the case moves to a state hospital.
FORT WORTH, Texas — The daughter of a Fort Worth-area firewood delivery driver killed in a brutal 2024 attack says a judge’s decision to find the accused killer not guilty by reason of insanity has deepened her pain, even as the case enters the state mental health system.
The ruling means Christantus Omondi will not face a standard murder conviction in the death of Scotty Jackson, 51. Instead, he is expected to be placed in a state hospital after a mental evaluation concluded that he was legally insane when the attack happened. The decision resolved the criminal case, but it did not resolve the family’s grief or the public questions that followed a killing described by police as sudden, violent and witnessed by others.
Jackson was delivering firewood to a Fort Worth home in January 2024, according to police records previously reported by FOX 4. The homeowner came outside to help unload the order during freezing weather. Then, investigators said, a naked man later identified as Omondi walked up and began yelling. The homeowner recalled a tense face-to-face confrontation in which Omondi held up a key and claimed the men were on his property. Jackson tried to calm the situation, telling him they were there to unload wood for the homeowner because it was cold outside, the homeowner said. Court records later described how the confrontation turned violent, with Omondi striking Jackson repeatedly with a piece of firewood.
The homeowner escaped and ran inside, but Jackson was left in the yard. Police said officers found him dead with severe blunt force trauma to the head and neck. Investigators said the homeowner’s statement was supported by other witnesses and by surveillance video. After the killing, police said, Omondi returned to an Airbnb on the same street, where he allegedly threatened or tried to assault a woman staying there. Officers described him as aggressive and non-compliant when they arrived, and records said they used a Taser before arresting him. Those details became part of the early public picture of the case, but the final court ruling turned on a separate issue: Omondi’s mental condition at the time of the killing.
That distinction has done little to ease the pain of Jackson’s relatives. His daughter, Kasey DeLeon, told FOX 4 that she still sees the outcome as unjust because, in her view, legal insanity does not change the fact that her father was killed. She said she cries often and still thinks of herself as “a daddy’s girl,” a phrase that showed how closely she tied the case to daily family loss rather than legal language. DeLeon also voiced concern about what could happen if Omondi were ever allowed outside a secure mental health setting. Her comments reflected the fear some families feel after insanity verdicts, especially when the process shifts from a courtroom to a hospital system that can seem less visible to the public.
Lawyers on both sides accepted the evaluation that found Omondi legally insane, according to the report on the ruling. That agreement avoided a trial over guilt and focused the case on criminal responsibility. In Texas, a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity is not simply released. The next step is typically commitment to a state hospital, where treatment, supervision and future reviews take place under court oversight. A legal analyst interviewed by FOX 4 said the key test is whether the defendant understood right from wrong when the crime occurred. That standard can produce outcomes that are difficult for families to hear, because it does not dispute the harm suffered by the victim.
Jackson’s death also left behind the memory of an ordinary task that turned fatal with almost no warning. He had been working, delivering firewood in winter conditions, when the encounter began. The homeowner’s account suggested that Jackson tried to keep the situation calm before the attack escalated. That detail has stayed with the case because it framed him not as someone involved in a dispute of his own making, but as a man finishing a delivery and trying to do his job. The force of that contrast helped shape public reaction and sharpened the emotional divide between the legal ruling and the family’s sense of justice.
For now, the criminal case is over, and the focus shifts to Omondi’s transfer to a state hospital and the reviews that may follow there. For Jackson’s family, the next milestone is not a trial date but the slow, private work of mourning while the man accused of killing him enters a different kind of custody.
Author note: Last updated April 23, 2026.