Murder Under the Friday Night Lights will take a look at a 2005 shooting case against Jeffrey Doyal Robertson. According to sources such as CNN and Fox News, on April 7, 2005, Robertson shot his son’s high school football coach, Gary Joe Kinne, at the school’s field house. He then fled the scene, but police arrested him a couple of hours later. Meanwhile, Kinne, who sustained a critical wound and lost 80 percent of his liver, survived.
Robertson later pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm on the school grounds. He was also convicted of a second count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, reported ESPN. He received a 10-year prison sentence for the first count and a 20-year term for the second. Both were to be served concurrently.
The upcoming episode titled “Winning at All Cost” will air on ID this Wednesday, January 24, 2024, at 10 p.m. ET. An official synopsis reads, “The shooting of an East Texas football coach inside the high school fieldhouse triggers a lockdown in the middle of a school day; as police race to track down an active shooter, they discover a community deeply divided by the coach’s past.”
What did Jeffrey Doyal Robertson do & how did authorities arrest him?
CNN reported that in the morning hours after 10 a.m. on April 7, 2005, Jeffrey Doyal Robertson walked into Canton High School and shot his son’s football coach. He used an AK-47 (search) rifle to shoot Gary Joe Kinne once in the chest in the school’s field house. The former’s son played on Canton’s freshmen football team alongside Kinne’s son. A witness reported seeing Robertson flee in a 2004 black Dodge pickup.
According to Fox News, police found Robertson’s abandoned truck near a golf course outside Canton a few hours after the shooting. They were able to arrest him in the woods. He had two guns and a pocket knife on him and had self-inflicted wounds. Authorities had to carry out the suspect on a stretcher. Two days later, they charged him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The outlet reported that police learned that Jeffrey Doyal Robertson and Gary Joe Kinne had an “altercation” not long after the latter took over the program in 2003. NBC News reported that the coach had turned the team around in recent years. But his decisions did not sit well with some players and their parents.
NBC further reported that Robertson had frequent run-ins with coaches at the school. This led to school officials banning him from campus sporting events. However, coaches claimed that they assumed the issue had been settled until the shooting happened.
According to ESPN, Jeffrey Doyal Robertson, a heating and air conditioning repairman, first pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm on the school grounds. He received a 10-year prison sentence on the count. A jury later convicted him of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for which he received a 20-year term in March 2006, to run concurrently.
ID’s Murder Under the Friday Night Lights episode on Gary Joe Kinne’s shooting incident will air on January 24, 2024.
