Wanted murder suspect arrested west of Crowley

A murder suspect who sparked a manhunt after evading capture Wednesday is now in custody, officials confirm.

Kristun Sean Madewell was arrested Friday morning after a pursuit in which he crashed into a law enforcement vehicle on Farm Road 1187, west of Crowley, radio traffic indicates.

Officers summoned two ambulances to the scene immediately after the crash.

No other information was immediately available.

Madewell, 40, and his 31-year-old girlfriend, Milisha M. Moore, are accused in the slaying of Christopher Ortega, 29.

Ortega was found dead early Dec. 12 in the bedroom of a house in the 1500 block of Willow Park Drive in far south Fort Worth. He had been shot multiple times, the Tarrant County medical examiner reported.

Late Wednesday, investigators obtained an arrest warrant accusing Moore in addition to Madewell in She also faces a charge of evading arrest. She was in the Mansfield jail Thursday with bail totaling $100,750.

Homicide investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Madewell. About 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Fort Worth officers found him at a Johnson County house. But he and Moore drove away before officers could arrest him.

The officers and Johnson County sheriff’s deputies later found their vehicle at Texas 171 and Country Road 1000. Madewell attempted to drive into a pasture where he stopped and ran away with Moore, authorities said.

Moore was soon captured and investigators later obtained a murder warrant against her as well.

More than 80 officers joined the search. Authorities believe he stole a truck that was found abandoned in the Bicentennial Park neighborhood in Crowley about 5:30 p.m. Officers tracked down the truck, which was stolen from a business, because of a GPS device installed in it.

The search, which at one time included K9 police officers and Texas Department of Corrections bloodhounds, was eventually scaled back.

Joshua schools were placed on a “soft” lockdown Thursday as the hunt for Madewell continued. At the Joshua district’s nine campuses, students were required to stay in buildings all day and could not leave until dismissal.

Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said the precaution was taken at the schools because Madewell has relatives in the district. His deputies are assisting Fort Worth police in the search.

“We have been running some surveillance [at places] we know he may frequent, and we’ll continue to do that until he is caught,” Alford said.

Madewell has been convicted twice for evading arrest and received six months in state jail in 2009 and prison time in 2012, Johnson County court records show.

Moore was sentenced in June 2012 to eight months in state jail on a Tarrant County conviction of possession of a controlled substance, court records show.

Staff writer Dustin L. Dangli contributed to this report.

This story was originally published December 18, 2014 at 3:34 PM with the headline "Wanted murder suspect arrested west of Crowley."