Authorities ID victims and driver accused of killing 2 at Fort Worth game room, bus stop
An Arlington man accused of capital murder in the Fort Worth hit-and-run deaths of two people and of stabbing and critically wounding another man was booked early Thursday in the Fort Worth Jail, according to jail records.
Jail records identified the suspect as Chassity L. Brooks, 38, who was booked just before 12:30 a.m. He faces a charge of capital murder of multiple persons.
The victims killed on Wednesday have been identified as Lailani Duroy Snell, 57, and Jeffrey Allen Mazurowski, 45, both of Fort Worth, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office website.
Brooks was arrested Wednesday afternoon after he led Fort Worth police on a chase that turned into a standoff and then ended in a south Fort Worth subdivision, police said.
The chase began after Brooks was accused of stabbing a man on Wednesday morning at a Fort Worth apartment complex.
Police responded to the stabbing call just after 11:40 a.m at the Villas de Sonoma apartments, in the 8600 block of Las Vegas Court. When they arrived, officers found a man with severe cuts to his face and neck, according to an incident report.
Witnesses told police that the suspect had driven away from the scene after stealing the stabbing victim’s black truck.
At 1:44 p.m. Wednesday, the stolen black truck crashed through the glass front doors of a game room at 8751 Camp Bowie West Blvd. and drove back and forth multiple times inside of the business, police said.
A man inside of the game room, later identified as Mazurowski, was pinned between the truck and a wall. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
Employees of the Taz game room said that the victim and the suspect were both regular customers. One employee told the Star-Telegram on Thursday that he thinks the suspect targeted the business because he was looking for another man he was in a fight with a few days earlier.
The man who died wasn’t involved in the fight, the employee, James McWhorter, said.
“He didn’t deserve it. He was an innocent bystander,” McWhorter said. “The dude who did this got knocked out by somebody and he thought he was going to be in the game room at that time, but it wasn’t him.”
McWhorter said he had just left work about 45 minutes before the truck crashed into the business.
“If I would have been there 45 minutes earlier, it would have been me,” he said. “It blows my ... mind that it could’ve been me in that room. Right there. The truck could’ve hit me. But instead it got somebody else that didn’t even have anything to do with the game room. He was just in there talking amongst friends.”
Police saw the black truck leaving the damaged business and tried to stop it. The driver, later identified as Brooks, accelerated and refused to stop, Fort Worth police said.
The black truck collided with a red truck in the 7600 block of Camp Bowie West Boulevard.
After crashing into the red truck, the black truck veered off the roadway onto a sidewalk, where it hit a woman who was sitting at a bus stop on Camp Bowie Boulevard. The woman, Snell, was taken to a local hospital, where she died from her injuries.
After hitting the woman, the black truck drove through the parking lot near Jiffy Lube at 7601 Camp Bowie West Blvd. The truck then collided with a Hyundai and stopped.
Brooks got out of the stolen black truck and started blending into the crowd that had gathered because of the wreck, police wrote in the incident report.
Brooks then is accused of stealing a white truck at the scene as the owner shouted at police that his truck was being stolen.
Brooks then led police on a chase for several miles before he was cornered in the south Fort Worth neighborhood, near Misty Mountain Drive and Deer Trail, about 3 p.m., police said.
Police surrounded the truck with SWAT vehicles and used tear gas to get Brooks out, took him into custody and walked him to a waiting MedStar ambulance.
Brooks was taken to a hospital to receive medical attention for minor injuries before he was booked into the jail, police said.
The stabbing victim was taken to a local hospital, where he was listed in critical condition and underwent surgery. It’s unclear how the suspect and stabbing victim knew each other, but a police spokesman said Wednesday that “a group of four individuals were inside the apartment complex discussing business when a male stood up and stabbed another male in the neck, then fled in the victim’s vehicle.”
John Sanchez, a Jiffy Lube employee, told the Star-Telegram that Wednesday was his first day working at that location. He said that the woman who was struck and killed outside was inside the shop earlier in the day asking for a job and how to apply.
Sanchez said the day was going on as normal when all of the sudden he saw a truck spinning out of control, hitting the bus stop, hitting the woman, then hitting his assistant manager’s vehicle head-on and totaling it.
“I remember [the suspect] getting out of the vehicle and telling us, and the cops, that the guy went that way. He was just pointing in some direction, telling us the guy went that way. He then started pointing to the lady on the ground saying that was his mom ... and well, that’s obviously not true. .. This guy decided to try to divert everybody and then he finally hopped in a customer’s truck and took off.”
He said the assistant manager who was hit while inside his vehicle didn’t report any serious injuries, but everyone was shaken up about what happened.
“If we’re being completely honest, all I keep doing is thinking about it,” Sanchez said. “All I’m thinking about is loud noises, that lady getting hit, the whole situation is reliving in my head and the guy taking off.”
“We could’ve stopped him, I feel like, but we didn’t,” Sanchez said. “That’s in my head too, that we could have probably stopped this guy, and he got away.”
Staff writer James Hartley contributed to this report.
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 10:10 AM.
