An East Texas man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder after he took responsibility and pleaded guilty to shooting a man while buying LSD in 2018, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced.

“This was a pointless murder that didn’t have to happen,” Ogg said. “By getting justice for the victim’s family, they are able to have some closure and move forward with their grief.”

Jace Weeks, 24, pleaded guilty last week to murder in the shooting death of 31-year-old Sam Kyle James on April 30, 2018.

Weeks, from a small town near Lufkin called Huntington, drove to Houston to buy LSD from James, who went by Kyle. Before the exchange could occur, Weeks shot James in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. James was found in his car in the parking garage of his apartment complex in the 600 block of Dairy Ashford.

Investigators with the Houston Police Department reviewed surveillance video from the complex to identify the car that Weeks had been in and were able to trace the license-plate number back to him. Investigators interviewed Weeks just days after the murder, and he admitted what happened.

Assistant District Attorney Bryan Honeycutt, a chief in the trial division, prosecuted the case.

“It was very important to the victim’s family that the killer face justice, and he took responsibility for his actions and admitted to how everything happened,” Honeycutt said. “The family of Kyle James has waited very patiently for the past five years, and we were able to negotiate an appropriate sentence.”

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