2 teens charged in death of Uber Eats driver wanted to steal car, authorities say
Two 14-year-old boys were arrested Wednesday on suspicion they were involved in the fatal stabbing of a 31-year-old woman who was delivering for Uber Eats in Haltom City on Saturday, officials announced.
The suspects, whose identities weren’t released because they’re juveniles, wanted to steal her car but couldn’t find her keys, according to police. They also took her iPhone 7.
The two suspects appeared separately in Tarrant County Juvenile Court on Thursday morning for virtual detention hearings, where officials read from a police report stating a confidential informant told law enforcement of their involvement and that one of them was planning to leave town. The teens came before a judge in a juvenile processing facility for a formal admission, officials said. They are charged with delinquent conduct/capital murder.
Ryan Munsie Graham, the victim from Fort Worth, is being mourned this week as a loving wife and mother to three young children who made TikTok videos with her family and founded a company called Graham Handmade that sells customized tumblers. A GoFundMe page to help her husband with funeral costs had raised more than $49,000 as of Thursday afternoon.
Tarrant County Judge Alex Kim, reading from a police report on Thursday, said a neighbor at the Haltom City apartment complex where Graham was killed heard a stomping noise on Saturday evening, like something banging against the wall, but didn’t think anything of it. When she left her apartment in the 4200 block of Northern Cross Boulevard around 9:30 p.m., she saw Graham on the ground with a pool of blood underneath her head, Kim said. Graham died at the scene.
During an interrogation, Kim said, the suspects indicated they began assaulting Graham because they were trying to steal her vehicle. They couldn’t find her keys and one of them stabbed her in the neck, breaking the knife in the process, Kim said.
“At this point, I’m very concerned about the safety of the community if I was to release you,” Kim said to one of the suspects during the hearing, which was live-streamed over YouTube.
Kim ruled both of the juveniles, who appeared on the Zoom call from the Tarrant County Juvenile Justice Center, should stay in detention. Kim said the police report indicated officers arrested the suspects on Wednesday by luring them into a fake Uber ride.
It’s not yet known whether the teens ultimately will be charged as minors or adults. If they’re charged as minors, they could be released when they’re 18 years old.
A SWAT team took the two 14-year-olds into custody at an apartment complex in the 3600 block of Tanacross Drive in Fort Worth, Haltom City police said in a news release on Thursday. Sgt. Eric Peters, a police spokesman, told the Star-Telegram in an email officers recovered Graham’s iPhone from a dumpster a couple days ago in the same complex where the suspects were arrested.
Peters confirmed their motive was to steal her car, noting police found it on Saturday night near the building where she was delivering food.
Details of how police were able to track the teens came out during the hearing on Thursday, and the lawyers for both boys expressed concern about how police were able to identify the suspects. Defense attorney Lisa Herrick, who was representing one of the boys, said she was unsure how the confidential informant connected the suspects to the crime and she also had received no information about how the interrogation was performed.
Officials with Tarrant County, citing the police report, explained the confidential informant had an associate who was contacted by one of the teens looking to relocate. The informant knew details of the crime that weren’t known to the public, officials said.
A DEA agent in Chicago reportedly connected police with the informant.
Kim stated there were additionally two witnesses who described seeing two young men in the area on Saturday, and surveillance footage also captured two people at the apartments where the phone was dumped.
The judge acknowledged “it’s not as clean as I’d like” and told Herrick “I 100 percent agree with the potential problems here.” But he noted the police evidence and the nature of the crime was enough to warrant the teens’ ongoing detention.
Staff writers Kaley Johnson and James Hartley contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 7:25 PM.
