Person of interest in judge’s attack held in slaying

Austin Police said the shooting happened as Kocurek and her family arrived home.

Art Acevedo, chief of the Austin Police Department, said detectives are looking to talk to Chimene Onyeri to see whether he has any connection with Judge Julie Kocurek’s assault.

A spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors dropped the murder case, and instead chose to try Onyeri for an unrelated aggravated robbery.

In the May shooting, authorities say Alexander was walking through a common area of a Houston apartment complex when two men approached him and shot him several times.

A person of interest in the assassination attempt of a Texas judge not only had a case before the official, but now faces a murder charge in a Houston homicide.

Responding officers initially thought she had been shot and she was initially listed in critical condition but a police spokesperson later said her injuries were sustained from shrapnel and broken glass and that she was in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.

An arrest affidavit from Onyeri’s 2012 arrest in his Travis County case shows Austin-area police charged Onyeri with fraudulent use of identifying information after police found 17 gift cards encoded with stolen bank account information during a traffic stop.

Acevedo wouldn’t comment on the judge’s condition, but said, “We’re very hopeful that she will recover”. A murder charge Onyeri faced in 2008 was dismissed three years later without explanation, Harris County court records show. Kocurek has spent about 25 years in Austin working as a prosecutor and then a judge.

Onyeri’s ties to Kocurek came from a pending motion in her court that would have revoked a plea deal in a fraud case, Plohetski reported.

Onyeri has a criminal record dating to 2006, with offenses that include fraudulently using another person’s identity or bank cards.

Eric Williams, a former Kaufman County justice of the peace, was later convicted of capital murder in Cynthia McLelland’s death.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Cameron Welch told The Associated Press that Onyeri was taken into custody Monday in Houston following a traffic stop.