[2] The homeowner, David Wilson, an oil company executive who had fired the fatal shot in the belief that Heidelberg was an intruder attempting to force his way into his family home, was arrested and charged with manslaughter, later increased to murder by a grand jury.

With so many people in a confined space, jury selection became a COVID-19 superspreader event, infecting not only prospective jurors but the judge and delaying the trial.

After his acquittal he and his lawyers brought an unsuccessful action to have the Midland County district attorney removed from office over alleged misconduct before the trial.

A native of Wichita Falls, David Wilson grew up watching his father work as operations manager for a small independent oil company that drilled 120 wells in Garza County's Dorward Field, after the family moved to Snyder, 90 miles (140 km) northeast of Midland.

"[4] In 2002, during Wilson's college years, while he was also working for an oil-services company in Ira, an opportunity arose to buy six stripper wells, each producing 6 barrels a day, in the Dorward Field.

Eventually he started Unitex Oil & Gas, which by 2011 owned 150 wells producing 400 barrels a day, specializing in shallow-field plays on the eastern shelf of the Permian Basin.

[5] By 2019 Unitex employed 80 and owned 1,500 wells; the year before[6] Wilson and his family had moved into a 6,985-square-foot (648.9 m2) mansion on a 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) lot off a cul-de-sac in the northern section of Midland.

The alarm company notified Midland police, who in turn dispatched Heidelberg and Victoria Allee, a probationary officer he was training, to the home.

Believing that the situation was too critical to wait for an ambulance, they took him in a police car to Midland Memorial Hospital,[6] where further efforts to save him were futile.

Chief Seth Herman praised him as "courageous, selfless, ethical and professional"; at Heidelberg's funeral, held at First Baptist, ending with the traditional last radio call to the fallen officer, he tearfully added "As much as I try, I will never be as good a man as Hayden.

[8] In late October 2021, district attorney Laura Nodolf announced that she had presented the case to the grand jury a second time and secured a new indictment charging Wilson with murder, on the theory that he "was very much intentional" rather than simply reckless when he fired.

Their testimony was augmented by an evidentiary record that included police bodycam video and footage from the security cameras inside and outside the Wilsons' house.

The next day, Nodolf showed the video of Wilson's interview by two Texas Rangers the day after the shooting, in which he said he had not heard Heidelberg call out that he was police, after which one of the Rangers, Cody Allen, testified about much of the documentary evidence collected at that time, including photographs of the gun and Heidelberg's uniform, as well as video montages of footage from the bodycams and the Wilson's security cameras.

On cross she said that shortly after Heidelberg's death the department changed its policy so that on alarm calls like this it would not respond unless it could be certain the verified key carrier had been contacted and was either on the location or headed there.

[6] After a prosecution expert witness testified about the scene as he was able to reconstruct it from the videos, which he said was more evidence than he had ever had to work with, Nodolf had the room lights dimmed and approached him pointing a flashlight and a fake gun.

She asked if from his experience as a police officer he would consider that situation potentially threatening enough to fire, given a variety of distances and directions the flashlight might have been pointing.

When he did take the stand, midway through the defense case-in-chief, he told jurors that by the time Heidelberg had been brought in he had lost a lot of blood and had no vital signs.

[6] After the prosecution rested, a defense motion for a directed verdict on the grounds that the state had not offered enough evidence to demonstrate that Wilson had acted out of any motive other than self-defense was denied.

[6] The defense began its case with its own expert witness, Albert Rodriguez, who attested to his years of training law enforcement on when to use force to resolve a situation.

[6] On direct examination, Rodriguez testified to the typical response pattern of individuals in a situation like Wilson found himself in, mostly but not always police officers.

He believed licensed operators would have seen the second error code and alerted police that the system was possibly faulty and there was probably no burglary being attempted.

He had prepared photographs recreating what Wilson and the responding officers might have seen that night as they approached the door from their respective positions, inside and on the front porch, as they appeared under the lighting conditions available.

[6] A mechanical engineer, Daniel Kruger, came next, presenting computer animations of the crime scene he had made based on data Meza-Arroyo had provided him.

[6] The prosecution asked Meza-Arroyo about the lights mounted on some of the palm trees in the Wilsons' front yard, which were providing illumination at the time of the shooting.

The defense introduced photos showing both the extensive amount of clothes in the closet and the house's thick insulation to explain why neither of them might have been able to hear Heidelberg say "come to the sound of my voice".

[6] On cross, Nodolf pointed out to Amy that on direct she had admitted not hearing any voices on the house, contradicting what she told the dispatcher when calling 9-1-1.

With gun laws changing rapidly, she added, the case as a whole showed how important it was in situations like the one that had given rise to it to stop and think for a second or two before pulling the trigger.

'"[2] In the Midland area, like all of West Texas, support for both law enforcement and the right to keep and bear arms, two positions Wilson's prosecution potentially pitted against each other, is strong.

The day after the verdict, callers to a local talk show on KWEL radio generally saw the whole affair as a tragedy, finding fault with neither side.

"[2] While the trial was pending, in 2021, both Wilson and the Heidelberg family sued the alarm installer and monitoring company, alleging its negligence had caused the prosecution and death respectively.