The suspect in the fatal freeway shooting of a high school girl just outside St. Louis is being investigated in connection with a second roadway shooting, federal court documents show.
Willie Herndon, a 42-year-old from Arlington, Texas, is accused of killing 17-year-old Alyssa Wilson on Oct. 14. In a federal complaint, investigators say a spent shell casing matching the one used in Alyssa’s shooting was found close to where a vehicle was struck on another freeway three days earlier.
No one was reported injured in the Oct. 11 shooting in St. Louis proper. The federal complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, states that a vehicle that had just exited Interstate 55 was hit by gunfire, and that security video showed a white SUV parked on the side of the interstate at the time before it “fled the scene immediately after the shooting.”
“A single cartridge case was recovered,” the federal complaint states. “The cartridge case’s headstamp was the same manufacturer as the one recovered by investigators during Wilson’s murder investigation.”
Lab testing is being conducted to determine if ballistic evidence ties the two crimes, according to the complaint.
Herndon is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis on Tuesday for a hearing on his pretrial detention on a federal charge of being a felon with a gun, according to the documents, which state he was convicted of felonies in Los Angeles for taking a vehicle without consent in 2001 and for receiving known stolen property and burglary in 2015.
Herndon is also scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on Nov. 4 in the same courthouse.
His federal public defender did not respond to a request for comment.
A high schooler’s life cut short
Herndon was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action after his arrest in the killing of Alyssa, a high schooler from nearby Florissant, Missouri, who was driving to a St. Louis Zoo Halloween celebration when she was shot Oct. 14.
“Alyssa was 17, excited about her life, excited about her future,” her father, Robert Hickman, said at a news conference Monday. “This was a senseless act.”
Herndon’s wife, Taiya Herndon, allegedly drove the pair to an Illinois hotel roughly 12 miles from St. Louis after the attack, authorities said. She faces a state charge of hindering prosecution.
Authorities have said Alyssa had no ties to the pair.
It’s not clear if either defendant has been assigned counsel in the state cases. The public defender’s office for the St. Louis area did not respond to a request for comment.
Following a search of the Herndons’ nearby Illinois hotel room after the attack, authorities said they found notebooks with handwritten entries, according to the federal criminal complaint.
The entries included license plate numbers, descriptions of vehicles and descriptions of law enforcement personnel Willie Herndon believed were following him, the complaint said.
On Oct. 2, the Herndons drove from Texas to Arkansas and then Missouri, arriving the next day, while using one of multiple Oklahoma license plates that did not belong to their white SUV, prosecutors alleged in the complaint. One plate was switched following Alyssa’s shooting, they said.
Killing captured on security video
Investigators relying on security video of the Oct. 14 attack said during Monday’s news conference someone in a white Buick Enclave stopped on the shoulder of the southbound side of Interstate 170 in Overland, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. That person got out, paced around and ultimately opened fire on Alyssa’s vehicle as it passed, authorities said.
A single round penetrated the back of Alyssa’s vehicle and struck the teenager in the back, exiting through her chest, according to the federal complaint against Willie Herndon. She was 12 minutes into her journey to meet a friend at the zoo, it said.
Alyssa was ultimately rushed to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, where she was pronounced dead, officials said.
Using information from security video, including a license plate number for the white Buick and an Arkansas Razorbacks sticker on its liftgate, authorities tracked the SUV to a Days Inn in Caseyville, Illinois, where detectives spent hours staking it out on Oct. 15 and 16, authorities have said.
When Taiya Herndon approached the vehicle, authorities rushed her, they said. When Willie Herndon soon emerged from the hotel afterward, authorities said, he ran and was also taken into custody.
Matching shell casings
The criminal complaint against Taiya Herndon stated that Willie Herndon admitted to investigators that he opened fire on the side of the freeway on Oct. 14, and that she admitted to driving.
“When interviewed, Willie Herndon admitted to standing outside the passenger door of the vehicle on southbound Interstate 170, and discharging a rifle,” the state complaint states. “Taiya Hendon admitted to driving the white Buick Enclave.”
A search of the Herndons’ hotel room turned up an American Built Custom Rifle Company version of the AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle, according to the federal criminal complaint.
It was loaded with MaxxTech 23 7.62x39 ammunition, which matches the brand and size of spent shell casing investigators said they found at the side of Interstate 170 after the attack on Alyssa, according to the federal complaint. MaxxTech was also the maker of the spent casing found near the Oct. 11 attack, it said.
Taiya Herndon is scheduled to appear for a hearing over the amount of her bail, set at $500,000 to be paid in full, on Thursday. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 19, according to state court records.