A 20-year-old woman was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for her role in the beating death of a 50-year-old man three years ago.
Bailey Forrest appeared in the 140th District Court with her attorney, Jesse Mendez, and pleaded guilty to a count of murder in the September 2022 beating death of Robert Stewart.
Murder carries a punishment of five years to life in prison.
As part of her plea deal with the Lubbock County District Attorney’s Office, an unrelated aggravated robbery charge filed against her was dismissed.
Forrest, who has been held at the Lubbock County Detention Center since her Sept. 30, 2022, arrest, entered her plea ahead of a Sept. 22 trial.
She was one of three people arrested in connection with Stewart’s death. Investigators at the time believed he was beaten to death in an ambush after he agreed to meet one of the teens online for a sexual encounter, according to A-J reporting at the time.
Steven Tobias Salazar, 19, is set to stand trial in September, after he was certified in January 2023 to be tried as an adult.
The case of the third suspect, who was 16 at the time and was charged as a juvenile, is no longer pending, officials said.
Investigating a deadly attack in a central Lubbock alley
Their cases stem from a Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit investigation that began on Sept. 27, 2022 when Lubbock police officers responded to the scene initially to help the city’s solid waste department with a vehicle blocking an alley in the 2600 block of 46th Street. Responding officers found Stewart in the back seat of his vehicle and EMS crews pronounced him dead at the scene.
Stewart, who lived about six blocks north of where his vehicle was found, suffered what investigators believed to be blunt-force trauma to his head and torso, according to a redacted probable cause affidavit. Evidence at the scene indicated that Stewart was killed elsewhere and his body was cleaned to hide blood evidence, court documents state.
The next day a tipster told police that Stewart was killed in an apartment in the 2100 block of 51st Street.
Detectives learned that during the investigation into an unrelated aggravated robbery case, Forrest’s parents said their daughter lived in the apartment, court documents state.
A second tipster called into the Crime Line number and said Forrest and two other people beat a man to death with a pole, wrapped his body in carpet and dumped the car and body in an alley.
Investigators searched the apartment and found large areas of blood and evidence of a cleanup. They also found a site where evidence appeared to have been burned. However, a partially burned wooden club was recovered from the burn site, court documents state.
Forrest and the 16-year-old girl reportedly told investigators they were present when Stewart was killed, saying Salazar beat Stewart to death.
However, the investigator found that Forrest and the girl’s statements contained inconsistencies about their involvement in Stewart’s death and obtained a warrant for their cell phones.
The next day, a forensic investigator linked a fingerprint in Stewart’s vehicle to Forrest.
Lubbock police arrested Forrest on Sept. 30 in the 4900 block of 4th street. She was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center, where she remains on a charge of murder and aggravated robbery. Her bond is set at $350,000 for murder and $100,000 for the robbery charge.
An hour later, a 16-year-old girl surrendered to police and was taken to the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center.
Salazar was arrested Oct. 3, about two hours after police issued a news release identifying him as one of three teenagers suspected in Stewart’s homicide case. Typically, police do not identify juvenile suspects, however, police officials believed at the time that Salazar posed a danger to the public. He was also taken to the juvenile justice center.
Stewart’s mother, Susan, read a statement from his widow, who told Forrest after her sentence was imposed that her callous, heinous actions, have forced her to spend the rest of her life without her best friend.
“He was not just a victim,” Lindsey Stewart wrote. “He was a brother, nephew, cousin, friend, and my husband. He worked hard every day to help support our family. He was a source of support for his sister, Debra, through their young childhood from the day they lost their parents in a car accident. He may not have been a perfect man, but who among us is perfect? No one.”
She told Forrest that she not only robbed her husband of his money and his life, but also took from him any future moments they would have shared.
“You stole everything not just from him, but from me and his family,” she said. “You had no right to take his life, or take him from everyone who cared for him,”
She told Forrest that she doesn’t know if she’ll ever forgive her and will have to accept that the 20-year sentence will keep the community safe from hurting anyone else.
“Even though you knew that what you were doing was wrong, you went ahead and participated in cold-blooded murder,” she said. “I don’t know how you can bear to look yourself in the mirror every day, knowing what you did. I don’t know if you feel any remorse for what you did to Robert, me, or his family, but I must say that your actions show me that you do not and that you don’t care. I find that both disturbing and horrific, and pathetic and sad.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Woman gets 20-year sentence in Lubbock man’s 2022 beating death
Reporting by Gabriel Monte, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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