Person of interest in attack on judge is charged with murder in unrelated case
A Houston man identified as a person of interest in a shooting that injured a Texas judge has been charged with murder in an unrelated case.
Police charged 28-year-old Chimene Hamilton Onyeri with murder on Tuesday, report the Austin American-Statesman (sub. req.), KEYE-TV, the Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle. The murder charge stems from a shooting outside an apartment complex on May 18.
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said on Tuesday that Onyeri is “a person of high interest” in the Nov. 6 shooting that injured Judge Julie Kocurek of Austin, Texas, according to the American-Statesman account. Kocurek was injured by shrapnel and glass when a shooter fired into her car as she was arriving home from a high school football game. She remained in the hospital Tuesday.
“We are not saying he’s the suspect; we’re not saying he’s the trigger man,” Acevedo said of Onyeri. “But he is a person of high interest.”
Onyeri had a connection to Kocurek, according to court records cited by AP, the Houston Chronicle and KEYE-TV. Kocurek was scheduled to consider sentencing Onyeri next month in a 2012 fraud case for which he received a delayed adjudication, according to the Houston Chronicle. Onyeri’s 2012 fraud charge stemmed from a traffic stop in which police found 17 gift cards encoded with stolen bank account information in his possession. Prosecutors sought to revoke probation in that case because Onyeri was charged in Louisiana with unauthorized use of a credit card.
Onyeri was previously arrested for murder in 2008 but the charge was dropped, according to the stories.
Onyeri’s father, Innocent Onyeri, told KHOU that his son was with him at his Houston home on the night of the Kocurek shooting.
