by CRAIG CIVALE / WFAA
Posted on February 19, 2010 at 4:44 PM
Updated today at 7:31 PM
HALTOM CITY - Police are investigating a chase that spanned three cities and ended with officers killing the suspect and finding his girlfriend dead in the trunk of his car.
Eric Frias, 24, was had recently lost his job and had a terrible fight with his girlfriend. However, no one - not even his family - said they could imagine what would happen next.
The chase ended just before 7 p.m. Thursday night when three Haltom City police officers open fired on Frias, who officers said had pointed a weapon at them.
It begin an hour earlier, just outside a junkyard where Johnny Gallegos heard gunfire outside his shop.
"We found her shoes right here and the bullets - all five of them - on the ground," he said.
The woman shot was Frias' 22-year-old girlfriend, Martha Martinez. Gallegos said he watched someone putting her body into a car as he called 911.
"What I witnessed from there was a body being lifted and dragged around the car, opened the passenger's rear door, shuts that door and gets in the vehicle [and] starts it," he said.
It was around that time that Frias' father, Oscar, received a frightening message from his son.
"I receive a text message at 6:05 p.m. that he had killed his girl and he was going to kill himself," he said.
Not knowing if the text was a joke, he soon realized it was serious when he learned the same text message also went out to Martinez's family too.
"He's not that kind of person, not a violent person," Frias' father said.
The couple was living at his father's home and had been dating for six months. The couple had gotten into a fight earlier in the week. Investigators have not said if that had anything to do with the violent attack.
The three Haltom City officers involved in the shooting have been placed on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
Frias' father said he wanted people to know his son's organs have been donated to help other families.
E-mail ccivale@wfaa.com
No comments:
Post a Comment