Timea Batts: Tennessee girl shot dead on her first day of school
Eleven-year-old Timea Batts is dead after being shot on her first day of school on August 12, 2016 in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
The sixth-grader was coming home, eager to tell her family about her first day, according to WTVF in Tennessee.
Police said that there are two different narratives in the shooting: One is that Timea was shot by an unknown assailant as she got off the bus about 3:20 p.m. Law enforcement was told that the little girl then proceeded to walk home to tell her father, Timothy Batts, 29, that she had a gunshot wound.
Police also said that, according to the evidence gathered, the girl was shot inside the home, occupied by as many as five people at the time, when she came home from her first day of school.
After being questioned, the father said that he had been asleep but grabbed his firearm when his daughter arrived home and opened the door, he thought she was an intruder. Then, video surveillance showed that he was up and walking about with a gun in his hand minutes before his daughter came home.
Timothy Batts was charged in the murder of his daughter. While he was first granted a bond, it was subsequently revoked when he failed a drug test.
“I’m just concerned about the drug use. Cocaine is a bad drug. It’s a very addictive drug. The reason we put the bond condition of taking a drug test on Mr. Batts was because he was convicted of sale of cocaine,” said Sumner County Judge James Hunter, according to court proceedings videotaped by The Tennessean.
Hunter seemed exasperated when speaking to the court about Batts: "I can raise the bond, I can put more conditions ... He can't move.. I don't know what other conditions I can put on him that would make a difference," he said in the video.
At a funeral attended by close to 500 people, Batts, who was out of jail for her funeral, said that his life is forever ruined because of shooting his first-born child.
“I wish it was a nightmare and I can awake now but it’s all too real,” Batts said at the funeral, The Tennessean reports. He was reading from a poem he wrote. “Since the day you were born I never pictured life without you. I hear you saying, ‘I’m at a better place’ but I’d give anything for another chance to see your smiling face. I love you forever until we meet again.”
Batts told the crowd that he had three things to tell Jehovah God before his little girl's casket closed.
"Forgive me for all of my sins and let me start all over again,” Batts said, according to The Tennessean. “When I can’t breathe no more, heaven please let me in. Every tear I shed, wash it with my soul cause I’ll see my baby Timea again where the streets are made of gold.”
