In the
Court of Appeals
Second Appellate District of Texas
at Fort Worth
No. 02-25-00413-CR
RODERICK DENNIS, Appellant
V.
THE STATE OF TEXAS
On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 2
Tarrant County, Texas
Trial Court No. 1891751
Before Birdwell, Bassel, and Wallach, JJ.
Memorandum Opinion by Justice Wallach
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appellant Roderick Dennis appeals from his conviction for two counts of
aggravated robbery, for which a jury sentenced him to fifty years’ confinement each
after finding his habitual-offender notice true. See Tex. Penal Code § 12.42(d), 29.03.
The trial court set his sentences to run concurrently.
In his sole point, Dennis argues that the evidence was insufficient to support
his conviction because there was no evidence that he used or exhibited a firearm or
used another object as a threat to facilitate aggravated robbery and that his judgments
should be reformed to robbery and the case remanded for new sentencing. We will
affirm.
Trial Evidence
Ujjal Sapkota testified first for the State. On April 26, 2024, he was working at
a Texaco with his coworker, Nayan Paudel. 1 When a man walked in with his face
painted white, Sapkota knew they were being robbed. Sapkota recognized the man,
who he identified as the defendant, as someone who “c[a]me[ in] every day
watching . . . when we put the money.” Appellant took around $2,500–3,000 in the
robbery.
1
Sapkota and Paudel were the complainants listed in Dennis’s two-count indictment. English did not appear to be Sapkota’s first language. Paudel did not testify; Sapkota explained to the jury that Paudel did not speak much English.
2
State’s Exhibit 1, a recording of Sapkota’s 911 call, was admitted and published
to the jury at the start of Sapkota’s testimony. In the call, Sapkota can be heard telling
the dispatcher that he had been robbed and that the perpetrator had a gun in his
pocket. He further stated that the perpetrator had left in a white car, but he could not
provide a license plate number because, since the perpetrator had a gun, he had stayed
inside when the perpetrator left.
In his trial testimony, Sapkota was asked about what he had seen Appellant
holding during the robbery. He explained that Appellant had his hand on something
“in his waist area.” Sapkota said that he “recognized [it as] a gun,” and he feared that
Appellant would shoot them. However, he never saw Appellant pull the object out
from his waistband area. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that he had
previously described the object to prosecutors as looking like a knife. But he then said
that he thought it was more likely a gun and that he had not been definite with
prosecutors that it was a knife. He said, “I don’t say exactly like a knife, but I thought
it looked like a knife or something. . . . Knife also, but it looked like a gun also. . . . I
s[aw] what looked like a knife[,] but I don’t think so it was not a knife. . . .” He further
stated, “I don’t know like what is that, but that is like a knife or that is also a gun also.
I[ ] said it most probably looked like a gun.”
The State next called Fort Worth Police Detective Jacob Brannan, who had
investigated the offense. Brannan testified that he had spoken to the complainants
and collected video from the store’s surveillance cameras. Some of the video was
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admitted at trial and published for the jury. The video captured the area behind the
register counter, and for most of the robbery, only Appellant’s right side can be seen.
Appellant appeared to be wearing disposable gloves, and as Sapkota testified, he had
white makeup or powder or a mask on his face. Appellant seemed to be holding
something in a front pocket or the waistband of his pants, but his hand obscured
most of the object from the camera, so only a small part of it could be seen in the
video, and it could only be seen briefly because of Appellant’s movements.
Appellant’s hand appeared to be gripping the object by a handle or edge, and the
small part that could be seen appeared to be shiny or silver in appearance. Appellant
never took his hand off the object or took the object out of his pocket or waistband.
Appellant could be heard telling the complainants something like, “Open up the cash
registers before I pop you.”
Brannan testified that Appellant’s saying “Do something or I’ll pop you” could
refer to hitting someone but could also refer to shooting someone. Regarding the
object that Appellant had, Brannan testified that in the surveillance video, “[i]t
appear[ed] that there is something in [Appellant’s] pocket” or waistband.
From witness interviews, Brannan obtained a description of the car in which
Appellant left the store. The car was registered to “the father of an associate of
[Appellant],” and further investigation led Brannan to consider Appellant as a suspect.
Based on Brannan’s investigation, on the day after the offense, he obtained a search
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warrant for a room at a motel. Other officers conducted the search and found a gun
“with other items from the robbery.”
Officers conducted a traffic stop of Appellant’s vehicle, and he was arrested
and interviewed by Brannan. The interview was published to the jury. Appellant
admitted in the interview that he had robbed the store, but he denied having a firearm
and claimed “[his] hand was just there” at his waistband.
Fort Worth Police Officer Susan Shore testified after Brannan. Shore works in
the crime scene search unit, and as part of that team, she participated in the search of
the motel room the day after the robbery. Like Brannan, she stated that the officers
found a handgun in the motel room. From pictures taken of the gun that were
admitted at trial, it appeared to have a silver barrel and grip.
Standard of Review
In our evidentiary-sufficiency review, we view all the evidence in the light most
favorable to the verdict to determine whether any rational factfinder could have found
the crime’s essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S.
307, 319, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2789 (1979); Baltimore v. State, 689 S.W.3d 331, 341 (Tex.
Crim. App. 2024). This standard gives full play to the factfinder’s responsibility to
resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable
inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S. Ct. at
2789; Baltimore, 689 S.W.3d at 341.
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Analysis
Appellant argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he used a gun
in this case because, if Appellant had a gun during the robbery, it was not seen or
referred to. We disagree; the jury had sufficient evidence to find that Appellant used
or exhibited a firearm during the robbery. “A person uses or exhibits a deadly weapon
under the aggravated robbery statute if [the person] employs the weapon in any
manner that facilitates the robbery.” Hernandez v. State, 501 S.W.3d 264, 268 (Tex.
App.—Fort Worth 2016, pet. ref’d) (citing McCain v. State, 22 S.W.3d 497, 502 (Tex.
Crim. App. 2000)). The State may prove use of a deadly weapon by circumstantial
evidence. See Garcia v. State, No. 14-19-00975-CR, 2021 WL 3576372, at *2 (Tex.
App.—Houston [14th Dist.] Aug. 12, 2021, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for
publication) (stating that the fact that no witness, including the complainant, saw a
knife in the defendant’s hands is not determinative of whether the defendant used or
exhibited a knife); see also Tex. Penal Code § 1.07(a)(17)(A) (defining deadly weapon as
a firearm “or anything manifestly designed, made, or adapted for the purpose of
inflicting death or serious bodily injury”).
Here, Sapkota testified that he could not say for sure whether Appellant had
either a knife or a gun, but he thought it was probably a gun. Moreover, whatever
Sapkota remembered about the event later, immediately after the robbery, he told the
911 operator unequivocally that Appellant had a gun. See Navarette v. California,
572 U.S. 393, 399–400, 134 S. Ct. 1683, 1689 (2014) (noting that the law generally
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treats statements about an event made soon after perceiving it as “especially
trustworthy because substantial contemporaneity of event and statement negate the
likelihood of deliberate or conscious misrepresentation” (internal quotation marks and
citation omitted)).
Further, the jury could find from the surveillance video that Appellant had an
object in his waistband or pocket. The object could not be identified from the video
because Appellant kept his hand on the object the entire time, and his hand blocked
most of it from the camera’s view. But the small part of the object that could be seen
looked shiny or silver, as did the gun found the day after the robbery in the motel
room connected to Appellant. Moreover, throughout the robbery, Appellant kept his
hand at his waistband, resting on or gripping the object, and the way that he held his
hand was consistent with holding an object like a gun in his waistband or pocket.
Although Appellant stated in his police interview that he did not have a weapon and
that he had just had his hand at his waistband, the jury did not have to believe that
statement. See Baltimore, 689 S.W.3d at 341–42 (noting jury’s role to evaluate credibility
and weight of evidence and resolve conflict in evidence).
Further, the jury could interpret his threat to “pop” the complainants as a
threat to shoot. See Cummings v. State, No. 05-11-00149-CR, 2012 WL 5350967, at *2 &
n.2 (Tex. App.—Dallas Oct. 31, 2012, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for
publication). The fact that Appellant never took the object out from his waistband
area would not have prevented Sapkota from perceiving that Appellant was holding
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something at his waistband or understanding Appellant’s threat, and it did not prevent
the jury from finding that Appellant used a gun during the robbery. Cf. Schneider v.
State, 440 S.W.3d 839, 843 (Tex. App.—Austin 2013, pet. ref’d) (noting that it is not
necessary for a witness to see a weapon in order to prove its existence and holding
jury had sufficient evidence to infer defendant had and used or exhibited a gun during
robbery when he kept his left hand at his waistband “and kept it there in such a
manner as to give [the complainant] the fear and belief that [the defendant] had a
weapon there as he claimed”).
The circumstantial evidence was sufficient for the jury to find beyond a
reasonable doubt that Appellant used a firearm when committing the robbery. See
Hernandez, 501 S.W.3d at 266 (holding circumstantial evidence sufficient to establish
defendant had putty knife and used it in robbery); Arceneaux v. State, 177 S.W.3d 928,
931 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2005, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for
publication) (holding sufficient evidence of gun use during robbery when defendant
told complainant that he had a gun and kept his hand under his shirt as if to conceal a
gun). We overrule Appellant’s sole point.
Conclusion
Having overruled Appellant’s sole point, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.
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/s/ Mike Wallach
Mike Wallach
Justice
Do Not Publish
Tex. R. App. P. 47.2(b)
Delivered: August 27, 2026
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