A death at a children’s indoor playground parking lot: murder or self-defense?
Gun violence, opiods and racial comments were part of this story, but which one led to the death of Fabian Smith?
Tyler Green’s wife said her husband thought of himself as a mobster. He once told her he desired to “kill a man and watch the blood gush out of his body.” Fabian Smith threatened to kill a man and fired three shots before fleeing in his early twenties, police said.
On February 19, 2017, Fabian and Tyler agreed to meet in a public space to discuss drug related matters, said defense attorney Stephen Aslett. Fabian parked his car near a children’s indoor playground called Jumpalooza in Atascocita and Tyler — wearing a black top hat, trench coat, and sunglasses — got into Fabian’s car around 2 p.m.
Tyler Green recounted his side of the story to defense attorney Aslett and said Fabian immediately started yelling and threatened him when he got into the car. He said had been doing so for several weeks after he found out Tyler — one of his best customers — no longer wanted to buy prescription drugs from him.
Tyler said Fabian reached under his seat, so he panicked.
Moments later, five gunshots were fired.
Still in the driver seat, Fabian was dead.
Police later found there was no other gun in the car and in retrospect, it might have been a cell phone that Fabian reached for.
Investigators said Fabian’s body had started to lean towards Tyler when he began to lose consciousness. Still in the car — Tyler pushed him back and left him leaning on his side before stepping out and pointing the gun towards the window and fired again, witnesses told police.
Tyler then ran into another car and sped away.
Ex-coworkers at Applebee’s in Atascocita — where the two men worked — told Fabian’s sister, Bianca Smith, 28, that they were surprised Tyler and Fabian were acquainted because Tyler, the 6-foot white man had made negative racial comments about or towards Fabian, a 5-foot, 5-inch black man.
Tyler’s drug dealer retired and passed his contacts down to Fabian and that is how Tyler and Fabian met, defense attorney Aslett said.
Bianca said her brother must have met Tyler while working at Applebee’s, although she and her family did not know much about Fabian’s relationship with Tyler. He had only mentioned hanging out with him once.
“Tyler was addicted to prescription painkillers, mostly Oxycontin (known as oxycotton on the streets),” Aslett said. “He was buying drugs from Fabian and had been for a while.” Fabian got mad when he found that Tyler wanted to stop buying opioids from him and started buying them somewhere else.
“Tyler’s new dealer was not a hardcore gang member like Fabian,” Aslett said. “Tyler wanted someone like that — more low-key.”
Fabian had a few misdemeanors in Houston, but the defense dug deeper into his past during trial. An investigation was initiated in Gulfport, Mississippi, where Bianca said she and her eight siblings were born into poverty. The Smith family relocated to Houston after Hurricane Katrina damaged their home in 2008.
A private investigator found that Fabian was a member of Vice Lords — which is one of three main gangs behind crimes on the Gulf Coast. A past criminal record also showed he had been to prison, beaten an ex-girlfriend, and broken into a home to steal guns.
Although Fabian was a protective older brother, Bianca said she worried about his tendency to be easily influenced.
Bianca vividly recounted the events of the weekend leading up to the murder. She had rented a car from Enterprise for a roadtrip to Gulfport, where she saw their first nephew’s birth.
On Sunday, minutes away from returning home, she called her mother to make sure someone would be ready to hop in a car and follow her to the dealership. She wanted to return the car quickly and avoid late fees.
Fabian walked outside to greet Bianca the moment he saw the car pull up in their driveway.
When they got back home, Fabian carried his sister’s luggage inside. He walked fast and on his tiptoes like he had since he was a kid. Then he said, “You know what? You can go inside. I’ll be right back,” and took off in his car.
Bianca thought it was nothing out of the ordinary because on Sundays he often watched games at Coaches Sports Bar & Grill just a few feet from Jumpalooza, where Tyler was at the time, and Enterprise, where he and Bianca had just been.
The last thing Smith did was park his car near the children’s hangout.
Outside of work, Tyler dedicated time to a red-haired woman with eyes as bright as his blue ones. He called her, Keri Livingston, his girlfriend.
Tyler eventually went home to his girlfriend’s home-cooked dinner after he left Fabian dead in his car. Keri later testified that Tyler had thrown up after eating, and that he had put the black trench coat with Fabian’s blood on it directly behind the dirty clothes hamper.
ABC-13 later aired footage captured by the Jumpalooza surveillance camera seeking information about a murder suspect. Keri was watching TV and recognized the suspect to be her boyfriend. She immediately got up to check her weapon — a black .38 special — and saw that out of nine to 10 bullets, five were missing.
Keri called police and gave information that led them to the murder weapon and Tyler’s arrest.
He was jailed on a $50,000 bond in February 2017 while the Smith family traveled to Gulfport to bury Fabian.
Two months later, Tyler was released on a $40,000 bond after an appeal.
He refused to pay fees for and take a drug test in August 2017, which violated his bail conditions. Court files showed a urine sample revealed opioids in his system two days later.
Tyler was arrested on a $120,000 bond and was sentenced to 50 years in prison for murder in February 2018. He is currently an inmate at TDCJ Garza West unit in Beeville, TX.
“Tyler is an amazing young man in an unfortunate situation,” said Green’s mother, Kelly Riley. “This is and was a self-defense case.”
Kelly could not speak about the case without approval from the appeal attorney, but said she would love to tell her son’s truth after it concludes.
While Fabian’s family acknowledges his criminal record, they argue that Fabian was not a hostile person and did not carry a gun in the few years leading up to February 19, 2017.
“He (Tyler) had one year to construct a self-defense claim,” Bianca said. “For me it was everything that I had seen in the news for every other young black man that had been killed by someone that didn’t look like them. I feel like he just used that year to construct that based on the climate of the country and everything else we were already going through.”
