GERALD PIETER ZWARST v. STATE TEXAS (11/30/89)
COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS, FOURTEENTH DISTRICT, HOUSTON
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November 30, 1989
GERALD PIETER ZWARST, APPELLANT
v.
THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE
On Appeal from the 361st District Court, Brazos County, Texas, H. G. Dalehite, Judge, Trial Court Cause No. 18,049-361.
COUNSEL
J. B. Williamson of LaPorte, for appellant.
Roger L. Ezell of Galveston, Texas, for appellee.
Panel consists of Justices Paul Pressler, Cannon, and Ellis.
Author: Pressler
Appellant was indicted for the felony offense of aggravated kidnapping, TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. ? 20.04 (Vernon 1974). Due to pre-trial publicity, the presiding judge in the case ordered a change of venue from Galveston County to Brazos County. After a plea of not guilty, a jury convicted appellant of the offense charged and assessed punishment at life imprisonment. We affirm.
On Memorial day, 1986, a nineteen-year-old woman left her job as a waitress on Galveston Island at about midnight and began driving along Interstate 45 towards her boyfriend's home in Texas City. Shortly before she entered the causeway to the mainland, two men in a Ford pickup truck began to annoy and follow her. Once across the causeway, they ran her car off the road. The two men then left their truck and approached the young woman's car. John Robert King, the co-defendant who is not a party to this appeal, walked up to the vehicle and broke out the driver's side window with his hand. He then reached into the car, opened the door and forced the young woman from the vehicle. Several eyewitnesses observed the woman's being dragged by her hair and forced into the truck. One passerby stopped to see if King needed any assistance but was told that it was a family problem and to stay out of it. This witness noticed a second man at the scene but was unable to identify him because of the distance and lighting. Additional witnesses saw the young woman fighting to get away and heard her cries for help, but none of the observers immediately reported the incident to the police. The appellant was not specifically identified by any witness as being at the scene. The abducted woman was later determined to be Shelley Sikes, and in spite of a massive investigation, the case remained unsolved for approximately thirteen months.