District Attorney Micheal Murray reported on August 23, Justin Allen Lee was convicted in Mills County of possession of a controlled substance and two counts of abandoning a child. Lee was sentenced to fifty  years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division in the abandoning case.

Assistant district attorney Elisha Bird and first assistant Chris Brown presented evidence during the three day bench trial that between October 2016 and March of 2017, Lee and his wife Kendra repeatedly left his two step-sons home alone-on some occasions for periods spanning several days. Bird presented evidence that in addition to simply neglecting the children, Lee also actively used methamphetamine in the home and possessed drugs and paraphernalia in the residence. The boys’ ages ranged from 10 to 13 years old during these events.

Although Lee testified at trial that his drug use was minimal and kept away from children, Bird played a recording of Lee telling Kendra not to come testify at the trial, because if she did, he would be sentenced to 50 years. Mills County Deputy Stephanie Brown had discovered the recording as she listened to jail phone calls that Lee made shortly before the trial began.

Lee was sentenced as a repeat offender because of a previous conviction and prison sentence that he had received for burglary of a habitation. During the punishment phase, District Judge Stephen Ellis heard testimony from a San Angelo Police Department Officer about Lee fleeing from officers through three different counties while he was out on bond on the abandoning a child case.

Lee was also sentenced to tow years in state jail for the possession case-the maximum for possession of less than a gram of methamphetamine.