Teqnika Moultrie: 30-Year-Old Northern California Woman Gunned Down Visiting Texas
Teqnika Moultrie, 30, was with the love in her life in July 2016 when she was abruptly cut down by a bullet shot into a crowd. Moultrie, who hailed from the Bay Area in California, was visiting her fiancé in Austin, Texas when a melee broke out near a donut shop downtown.
The couple were planning on getting married this fall, a dream instantly broken by a gunman who opened fire amid the chaos. Immediately after the shooting, Moultrie's fiancé struggled to make sense of it all.
“She's taking it really really hard and she's devastated like we all are," the victim's brother told Fox 7 in Austin. "People these days to just take it in their own hands in just decide that they are going to end someone’s, life, it's not their position to do that.”
Richard Moultrie said he was extremely close to his sister and that the two communicated several times a week, something that he's going to have a hard time dealing with. “I don’t know how it's going to be moving forward, she was the younger sister, but I looked up to her," he told the TV station. "I was so proud of her for all the accomplishments that she achieved in her short life."
Moultrie’s widow, Sabrina said the San Carlos woman was her world.
“She was an amazing person. Everybody loved her. You could see the light shine through when you saw her,” Sabrina Moultrie, 32, told the San Jose Mercury newspaper. “And she loved me — I was the lucky one that she married.”
Austin police soon identified Endicott McCray, 24, as a person of interest in the investigation and arrested him in Atlanta after he became a fugitive.
"As you can imagine, with this being shortly after 2 AM and the large crowds that we have on 6th Street at this time, all the individuals leaving the bars, it was a very chaotic scene. A lot of people running in different directions with all the gunshots that were coming out. Are officers did a fantastic job coming in and trying to get to the victims and get aid immediately," Chief Brian Manley, of the Austin Police Department old local media.
The suspect targeted his brother-in-law, police said, by shot four people, including Moultrie, who was struck fatally. Three women were hospitalized with serious injuries, and a man who was hit as well turned down treatment.
Endicott was offered a 50-year plea deal earlier this year but it is unclear whether his counsel has accepted it or not.