HOUSTON – Emotions ran high in a Harris County courtroom Monday as the fourth day of testimony unfolded in the manslaughter trial of Tony Earls Jr., who is charged in the 2022 shooting death of 9-year-old Arlene Alvarez.
The trial centers on whether Earls acted recklessly when he fired multiple shots at a truck he and his team say he believed was carrying a robbery suspect fatally hitting Alvarez instead.
Both sides rested their case by Monday evening. Tuesday, we expect closing arguments from prosecutors and defense attorneys before the jury deliberate.
Prosecutors rested their case Monday afternoon, and the defense began presenting its own witnesses, including a clinical psychologist and a crime scene reconstructionist, in an effort to reframe Earls’ actions as a traumatic response rather than criminal recklessness.
Prosecutors lean on forensics to paint a clear picture
The prosecution’s final witness, Celestine Rossi, a reconstructionist and investigator with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, spent over seven hours on the stand.
Rossi used a combination of police reports, surveillance footage, forensic photographs, and her own measurements to create detailed 3D renderings of the crime scene. These visuals aimed to show how and from where Earls fired his weapon on Valentine’s Day 2022.
During her testimony, Rossi concluded that all 10 gunshots heard on surveillance video were fired by Tony Earls, not the robbery suspect.
“In my opinion, yes, they are [all from Earls],” she told Prosecutor John Jordan. “I do not [believe the robbery suspect shot].”
Rossi explained that her audio analysis revealed only 10 gunfire-like sounds, which she said were consistent with a single shooter.
At 10:30 a.m., prosecutors presented a PowerPoint featuring bullet trajectory angles. At 10:47, jurors watched video footage of how Rossi used a former sheriff’s unit vehicle and a prop gun to demonstrate bullet impacts based on how Earls stood.
However, during cross-examination, the defense challenged the credibility of Rossi’s reconstruction, questioning whether she accounted for details like the height and tire size of an F-250 truck, which was relevant to the Alvarez family vehicle involved in the shooting.
Defense strategy: ‘fight or flight’
The defense opened its case by calling Dr. Sasha Lambert, a clinical psychologist, who testified that Earls’ behavior could be attributed to a “fight or flight” response after he and his wife were held at gunpoint moments earlier.
“If you are already in a fight or flight response… your body is gonna respond before, in most cases, you really evaluate what is going on,” Dr. Lambert told the jury.
The defense showed the jury a still image of the armed robbery and emphasized the fear both Earls and his wife experienced. During questioning, defense attorney Anthony Osso pressed Investigator Rossi on whether Earls’ wife appeared frightened during the robbery.
“Did it appear to you she was in fear for her life,” Osso asked. “I don’t know if she was in fear for her life, but she did seem very surprised,” Rossi replied.
Dr. Lambert said Earls may have perceived the fleeing truck, which belonged to the Alvarez family, as containing the robber because of heightened emotional and physiological stress. Prosecutors countered by suggesting that Earls might have been acting out of anger, not fear. Lambert responded that a person in traumatic shock could feel both.
Defense’s reconstructionist counters state’s expert
The second defense witness, Andrew Taravella, a crime scene analyst who spent 35 years with Houston Police Department (including time in the homicide division), was called to challenge prosecutors’ expert findings.
Taravella testified that he was brought into the case reactively, after the trial had already begun, whereas Rossi had been working the case for months. He analyzed the same video compiled by prosecutors, which synced surveillance footage with audio waveforms.
Taravella raised doubts about the state’s audio interpretation, saying sounds that Harris County District Attorney Investigator Zachary Caldwell (he testified on the first day of the trial), classified as “ambient noise” could, in his view, be additional gunshots. While he did not definitively say they were, he told the jury it was “reasonable” to consider that possibility.
He also emphasized how, from Earls’ perspective, the Alvarez truck, which began to move shortly after the robbery, could have looked like a getaway vehicle.
“That could easily give the appearance that the truck was waiting behind the sign… until such time as Mr. Earls would have rounded the corner,” Taravella testified.