DALLAS — A Dallas man accused in the shooting death of a nine-year-old girl, and then cutting off his GPS monitor and fleeing before trial, has reached a plea deal for a sentence of five years in prison, officials said.
Tyrese Simmons, 23, had his capital murder charge reduced to a manslaughter charge. He also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of bail jumping/failure to appear, according to court clerk officials.
Simmons received five years on the manslaughter charge and two years on the failure to appear charge, with those sentences to run concurrently.
Simmons' case was declared a mistrial last week, and a new plea hearing was scheduled for Monday morning in Dallas County court.
When asked about the mistrial, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said he "cannot comment directly on the case, so I will only speak generally."
"There are situations where people change their testimony either before trial, maybe during trial, or between trials," Creuzot said. "When that happens, it severely compromises our ability to prosecute a case. We don’t control witnesses and we don’t tell them what to say.”
Simmons was initially charged with capital murder in the shooting death of 9-year-old Bradoniya Bennett in August 2019. He was accused of targeting a rival rapper who lived next door to the victim at an East Dallas apartment.
Police at the time said there had been an ongoing feud between Simmons and the other rapper that led to an exchange of gunfire. During the incident, Bennett was shot in the head while sitting on a sofa in her apartment.
“It is believed that the suspect mistakenly fired at the wrong apartment unit after running around the building to the back of the apartment complex," Simmons' arrest warrant stated.
Simmons was scheduled to go to trial in the case in June 2023, but sources told WFAA that he removed his ankle monitor and went missing. Simmons was later located at a hotel in Tulsa, Okla., where he was captured and ultimately extradited back to Texas.
Previous coverage of the Simmons case from WFAA: