A grandson shot his grandmother inside the apartment and moved her body outside before relatives arrived, say police.
ARLINGTON, Texas — In the first public telling of the case, nearly everything turns on a few feet of space outside an Arlington apartment: a patio where relatives found a 68-year-old woman under a blanket and where police say the aftermath of a family killing was left in view.
That patio is where the homicide entered public life, but police say the fatal violence happened indoors, hours earlier, after an argument between the woman and her 21-year-old grandson, Rontrell Jackson, over his allowance money. The contrast between the private shooting and the public discovery gives the case its shape and explains why investigators quickly focused on both the apartment interior and the narrow outdoor area where the body was found.
The official account from Arlington police begins with the relative who made the discovery. Officers were sent to the apartment complex in the 1800 block of Carriage House Circle at about 4:40 p.m. Friday, March 20. A family member had found the woman unresponsive outside her front door. Paramedics determined she had been shot and pronounced her dead there. Police did not initially release her name, saying the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office would do that after proper notification. Later reporting identified her as Rita Marie Jackson. In public, the scene was simple and stark: patio, blanket, body, police response. In private, investigators say, it pointed back to a shooting inside the residence.
Police said detectives learned Jackson and the victim had recently been in a heated argument that led to the loss of his allowance money. When he was questioned, according to the department, Jackson admitted shooting the victim early that morning inside the apartment and dragging her body to the patio. Officers recovered a firearm inside the apartment that they believe was used in the killing. That sequence transformed the patio from the place of discovery into an extension of the alleged crime scene. It also suggested a deliberate act after the shooting, not only the gunfire itself but the movement of the body and the covering of it with a blanket before relatives arrived later in the day.
Seen from the neighborhood level, the case unfolded in a setting that is ordinary in every visible way: shared walkways, apartment doors, small outdoor spaces where daily life usually spills over in plain sight. That ordinariness can make a violent death feel even more jarring. Nothing in the early public record suggested a wider threat to the community, and police framed the killing as a domestic case centered on known family members. Still, the details police chose to release carried their own weight. They emphasized the relationship between suspect and victim, the argument over money and the physical act of moving the body. Each detail pushed the story away from abstraction and toward a concrete image of violence rooted inside a family home.
The case has now moved into the slower public rhythm of criminal procedure. Detectives obtained a murder warrant, police booked Jackson into the Arlington City Jail, and county inmate records later showed him in custody in Tarrant County with bond set at $750,000. Arlington police said the investigation remains ongoing, meaning the public record may still expand through autopsy findings, forensic testing and court hearings. It was not immediately clear in the available reports when Jackson would next appear in court or whether an attorney had publicly responded to the allegations.
For relatives, the hardest fact may remain the first one they encountered: not the wording of a charge, not the bond amount, but the sight that began the case. Everything since then has become part of a legal file. The patio is still the place where this story became real to everyone else.
The murder allegation remained pending in the latest available records, with Jackson still in county custody and investigators still treating the case as active. The next formal update is expected to come through the court process or the medical examiner’s final documentation.
Author note: Last updated April 14, 2026.