Dallas, Texas cops this weekend arrested career criminal, Antonio Lamar Cochran in connection to the murder of Zoe Hastings, 18.
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A man with ties to Texarkana, Texas, is a suspect in the abduction and slaying of an 18-year-old in Dallas, CBSDFW.com reports.
US marshals arrested a man Saturday accused of murdering an 18-year-old girl who was on her way to an LDS Church class October. 11, officials reported.
Antonio Lamar Cochran, 24, was taken into police custody after detectives discovered DNA evidence at the crime scene and matched it to his, according to the New York Daily News.
Cochran, 34, was apprehended at an apartment in Northeast Dallas. Hastings was found the next morning near her family’s minivan, which was crashed into a creek in Dallas.
Cochran, who is now being held at the Dallas County Jail on a capital murder charge, has retained lawyer Paul Johnson as counsel.
‘She loved the Lord, Jesus Christ, and loved serving others. The witness said the man got into the minivan and the woman moved over to the passenger seat.
Maj. Geron said, during the press conference on Saturday, that Hastings had stopped at the Walgreens to drop off a previously rented Redbox video.
“To see that type of outpouring for a family few of them even knew was refreshing”, Geron said.
In the Bowie County sexual assault trial, a 17-year-old girl testified that Cochran, who had dated her mother, offered to give her a ride February 12, 2014.
According to TXK today, Cochran was found not guilty of sexual assault earlier this year after a probable cause statement said he allegedly threatened his girlfriend’s daughter to make her engage in nonconsentual sexual acts.
“The independent witnesses and facts of the case simply did not convince the jury that the alleged victim was telling the truth”, Chief Public Defender Rick Shumaker told the website in January.
Hastings, who worked at Studio Arts Dallas alongside her father, was the oldest of her siblings.
Police have not revealed how Hastings was killed, saying only that she died of “obvious homicidal violence”.
A police spokesman also characterized him as a “sexual predator” in a news conference Saturday, though he has not yet been charged with a sex crime in the Hastings case. We feel one step closer to bringing closure to our family regarding this senseless tragedy.
The manner in which the entire community has banded together for the goal of honoring Zoe’s life and seeking to find the truth and justice is representative of how Zoe lived her life loving others and recognizing a power greater than herself.
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Please continue to keep the Hastings family in your thoughts and prayers.
