John Jefferson
Left inset: Dakari Jahi Lenear. Right inset: Rhonda Lenear (Harris County District Attorney). Background: The crime scene (The Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office).
A Texas man who told his wife that if she wanted to pray, she needed to do it then – before he shot her with an assault rifle – as she bravely audio-recorded the confrontation, has learned his fate.
Dakari Jahi Lenear, 48, was sentenced on Tuesday to 65 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the murder of 45-year-old Rhonda Lenear, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced in a press release. He pleaded guilty on Monday as the trial was about to start. The jury was directed to find him guilty, and then he was sentenced.
The bloodshed happened on May 19, 2021, in the 9500 block of Walnut Glen Drive, north of Jersey Village, more than 17 miles northwest of Houston.
Dakari Lenear, who did not have a stable job, was at home with his wife, who worked from home as an engineer, and two teenage children who were being home-schooled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After he told his kids to go into the family’s truck, one of the teens saw Lenear through the window with his assault rifle, so they texted their mother that they were scared for her.
As her husband carried the gun into the room where she was working, Rhonda Lenear began recording on her phone, prosecutors said.
“He told her that if she wanted to pray, she needed to do it then and that both of them would be dead that day,” prosecutors said in the press release.
Lenear then shot his wife multiple times. The teens called 911.
Deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded and found Dakari Lenear in his open garage, with his wife was found dead on the living room floor. He told investigators his wife came at him with a knife, and he shot her in self-defense, which was disproved by the recording his wife made of her last moments, prosecutors said.
Assistant District Attorney Kelly Marshall, who prosecuted the case, said the convicted killer had terrorized his wife for years.
“Rhonda bravely audio-recorded Lenear as he was holding an assault rifle and telling her that she would be dead by the end of the day,” Marshall said in the news release. “As the recording caught the last moments of her life, she tried to de-escalate the situation. Rhonda’s last words were the names of her children as Lenear murdered her.”
Rhonda Lenear was described as a loving, bright, vibrant person and a great mother who worked hard for years to keep her family together.
“I’m not angry,” her mother, Debra Tatum, told local ABC affiliate KTRK. “I pray, just like when me and the kids prayed last night. I pray, ‘God, don’t let them have any bitterness, help them to turn everything around, turn everything that is going on for God to be lifted up.’”
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