An elementary school assistant principal in Fort Worth is dead, and her husband is sitting in a Tarrant County jail cell. What began as a report of an accidental shooting has since been ruled something far more serious.
Lindsay Velasquez, 42, died from a gunshot wound to the head at her home on April 17, 2026 — a Friday evening that ended with police tape and a community left searching for answers. She was an assistant principal at Luella Merrett Elementary School in Fort Worth ISD, a role she’d been growing into for just two years.
A 911 Call, Then an Arrest
Officers responded to a residence in the 1000 block of Sproles Drive in Benbrook around 7:30 p.m. after someone called in to report that a person had been accidentally shot in the face. What they found led to something more than an accident report. Her husband, Alberto Alexander Velasquez, 39, was arrested at the scene before the night was out.
He’s currently charged with manslaughter and remains held in Tarrant County Jail on a $35,000 bond, reported KRLD. That charge — manslaughter, not murder — suggests investigators are still working through the circumstances of the shooting. Still, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t leave much room for ambiguity.
Ruled a Homicide
The medical examiner’s office classified Lindsay Velasquez’s death as a homicide. That designation matters. It means, in the eyes of the county, this wasn’t simply a tragic accident — it was a death caused by another person’s actions. Whether prosecutors eventually seek a more serious charge than manslaughter remains to be seen.
How does a community process something like this? Luella Merrett Elementary is a place where Lindsay Velasquez had been showing up every day — for two years — to help run a school, support teachers, and look out for kids. She was in her second year as assistant principal, which means she was still relatively new to the role, still building something. That’s the part that tends to hit a school community hardest.
A School Left Grieving
Fort Worth ISD has not yet released a formal public statement as details continue to emerge, but the loss of a school administrator under these circumstances sends a particular kind of shockwave through the families and staff who knew her. Assistant principals aren’t distant figures — they’re the ones in the hallways, at dismissal, at discipline meetings, at school events. They’re present in a way that’s hard to replace.
As for Alberto Velasquez, the investigation is ongoing. The manslaughter charge, the bond, the medical examiner’s ruling — all of it points to a case that’s far from resolved. Prosecutors and detectives will ultimately determine what the evidence says happened inside that home on Sproles Drive.
For now, a school is without one of its leaders, and a woman who spent her career around children won’t be walking back through those doors. That’s not a detail that gets easier with time.
