Police said the killing followed an argument over allowance money, and a relative found the victim on the patio hours later.
ARLINGTON, Texas — A 21-year-old man has been charged with murder after police said a relative found his 68-year-old grandmother fatally shot on the patio of her apartment Friday afternoon, beneath a blanket, in northeast Arlington hours later.
The arrest drew swift attention in North Texas because investigators described a family dispute over allowance money, an alleged confession and a body left outside for hours before discovery. Local station WFAA later reported that the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victim as Rita Marie Jackson, while county records show the suspect, Rontrell Jackson, remains in custody. Police have not released a fuller public account of the final confrontation.
On Friday, March 20, officers were called at about 4:40 p.m. to the 1800 block of Carriage House Circle, near East Lamar Boulevard, after a family member found the woman unresponsive on her patio, according to the Arlington Police Department. A blanket covered her body, and paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene after determining she had been shot. The department said detectives soon centered the investigation on her grandson, Rontrell Jackson, 21. In a public release the next day, police said the two had been in a “heated argument” that ended with the woman withholding his allowance. Detectives said Jackson later told them he shot his grandmother inside the apartment early that morning and then dragged her body outside. He was arrested on a murder warrant and first booked into the Arlington City Jail.
Police said investigators recovered a firearm believed to have been used in the shooting from inside the apartment, giving the case both a weapon and what authorities described as an admission during questioning. But the department’s public statement left major gaps. It did not say how many shots were fired, whether anyone else was in the apartment, who owned the gun or whether neighbors heard the shooting. Officers also did not say what happened between the morning killing and the late-afternoon discovery on the patio. The victim’s age, 68, was released immediately, but her name was withheld at first pending formal identification. WFAA later reported that the medical examiner identified her as Rita Marie Jackson. County inmate records show Jackson is now housed at the Tarrant County Corrections Center, and multiple news outlets, citing jail records, reported his bond at $750,000.
The case unfolded in a residential pocket of northeast Arlington, not far from East Lamar Boulevard, where neighbors said the police response brought the first sign that something had gone badly wrong. Jerry and Keiarra Dennis, who live below the family’s apartment, told WFAA they had not heard a disturbance before officers arrived. After learning what police said had happened, Keiarra Dennis said it was “hard to process” that a woman had lost her life over a family disagreement tied to money. Jerry Dennis told the station the violence felt even more jarring because it happened so close to home. Those remarks did not add legal evidence, but they showed how quickly the killing unsettled people living nearby. The image described by police, a grandmother covered by a blanket on her own patio, gave the story an immediate and deeply personal frame.
For prosecutors, the case now moves from the first police account into the slower, document-heavy stage of a homicide prosecution. The murder charge has already been filed, but the public record still lacks a detailed probable-cause narrative beyond the police release and brief follow-up reports. Defense lawyers will eventually have a chance to challenge any statement Jackson gave detectives and to examine how investigators handled the gun, the scene inside the apartment and the timing of events on March 20. Prosecutors, in turn, will need to connect the physical evidence, the autopsy findings and any recorded statements into a single timeline. As of late this week, authorities had not publicly laid out a court schedule in the reports available online. The next clear milestones are likely to come through county court filings, bond records and any further release from police or the medical examiner.
The public account remains stark partly because so much of it is domestic and ordinary. Police said the argument was over allowance money, a phrase that suggests a routine family dispute until placed beside a homicide charge. That contrast shaped much of the local reaction after the arrest. News reports did not describe a public confrontation, a chase or a struggle that spilled into the street. Instead, the known events stayed almost entirely inside an apartment until a relative made the discovery hours later. Even now, the woman’s final morning has been described only in broad terms. There has been no public explanation of whether she lived alone, how long her grandson had been staying with her or whether officers had been called to the apartment before. What is public, and uncontested so far in official statements, is narrow but severe: a woman is dead, her grandson is charged, and the investigation remains active.
As of Friday, Jackson remained in county custody, the investigation was still open and the next significant public developments were expected to come in court filings that may fill in the hours between the morning shooting and the 4:40 p.m. discovery.
Author note: Last updated March 27, 2026.