Murder suspect accused of shooting prostitute inside vacant Fort Worth house
Their time at an hourly motel on Lancaster Avenue was up.
Lakisha Washington and Juan Garcia, with whom, for $40, she agreed to have sex last week, had to go.
After they left the motel, Washington guided Garcia to a house in east Fort Worth for more sex, according to a police account of the case. She was fine when he left, Garcia told the police.
Homicide detectives believe Garcia killed Washington, and they arrested the 21-year-old man on Tuesday on suspicion of murder.
Washington, who was 48, was shot in the head. A projectile was found inside a wig near her body. A single .45 Auto Blazer cartridge casing was found near her.
A construction worker who had arrived to work on the vacant house found Washington alive on Jan. 5.
As he entered the house, the worker heard a moan. He walked through the house and found the injured woman in a bedroom. He called his employer, who called the police.
Washington’s brain death was confirmed the next day at a hospital.
The untangling of the case and the identification of the suspect was achieved through surveillance video of the suspect vehicle, metadata within video on Garcia’s cellphone and the projectile at the killing scene, according to the affidavit supporting Garcia’s arrest warrant.
A crime lab firearms technician concluded that the firing pin impression that was left on the casing from the homicide scene was consistent with a Springfield Armory XDS-45 pistol, Fort Worth Police Department Detective Jeremy Balders wrote in the affidavit.
Garcia consented to a police download of his cellphone, according to the affidavit.
Detective Balders looked through the photos and videos on Garcia’s phone and found images of Garcia posing with a black and brown Springfield XDS-45 pistol.
The detective watched a video, recorded on New Year’s Eve, of two men firing a similar pistol. The metadata for the video contained GPS coordinates for the location where the video was recorded, Shackleford Park in Fort Worth.
Detectives went to the park and found 11 cartridge casings of the same brand and caliber of ammunition as the casing from the homicide scene at the exact GPS coordinates from the video, according to the affidavit.
An ATF database suggested the casing from the scene and one of the casings from the park were consistent with having been fired from the same gun. The preliminary connection will require a microscopic comparison for confirmation.
