A 17-year-old homeless runaway is in custody for the murder of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser, Austin police said Friday.
Meechaiel Khalil Criner has been booked into the Travis County jail and will be formally charged with murder, a first-degree felony, this afternoon, cops said. He could face further charges.
“We are very certain that the subject we have in custody … is responsible for the death of this beautiful young woman,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters.
The teen suspect apparently disappeared from his Texarkana home in August, when his grandmother last heard from him. Criner had previously detailed living life in foster homes and being bullied for a Dec. 2014 school newspaper story.
Meechaiel Khalil Criner, 17, is shown in a handout photo from Austin Police.
After authorities released campus surveillance footage, firefighters realized that the suspect looked like a man they'd dealt with during a trash fire Monday.
When Austin Fire Department initially responded to the scene of the blaze, they found Criner, who was later transported to LifeWorks, an Austin nonprofit that operates an emergency shelter. The teen had a bike with him at the time, which firefighters took for safekeeping.
Authorities later learned Criner had been burning some of Weiser’s belongings.
After connecting the dots, police picked up Criner at LifeWorks, where they found him with a duffel bag that resembled Weiser's. Initially, Criner was taken into custody for tampering with evidence.
Authorities said they're still not releasing details about the manner of Weiser's death, although previously they said she'd been assaulted. Acevedo stressed that the matter is still under investigation.
"I don't have a clue what the motive is," he said.
Criner is not a student and has no known affiliation with the university. But in December 2014, the teen was the subject of a story in the Texas High School student newspaper in Texarkana, some 380 miles northeast of Austin.
“Every day, I feel people think I’m not capable of much,” he told the Tiger Times. “What I want to leave behind is my name - I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is.”
Cops believe the teen hadn’t been in Austin long. And in the school newspaper profile, Criner described a tough upbringing that featured bullying and foster homes and his alcoholic mom lost custody of him and his four siblings.
Described as a sophomore in the article, Criner says kids teased him about his “thick, African-like accent.”
“I’ve been bullied almost my whole life,” he told the paper. “In elementary school, I would come home crying almost every day. It was because of my accent, you see. People couldn’t understand me.”
He also told the paper to he likes to “stand up for people” and “help others.”
Police released images of the suspect earlier in the week.Criner had mostly been raised by his grandmother, who told local Texarkana station KSLA-TV that the family had not seen the teen since August.
Weiser, a 18-year-old dance and theatre student, vanished Sunday and her body was later found two days later in a creek on campus, shortly after her roommates reported her missing.
The Oregon native was on her way home after leaving the college’s drama building around 10 p.m. but never made it back to her dorm.
Weiser was planning to take on pre-med as a second major and visit relatives in Japan this summer, distraught family members said in a statement.
“We are relieved to hear,” of the arrest, the family said. “We remain steadfast in our desire to honor Haruka’s memory through kindness and love, not violence.”
University of Texas at Austin President Gregory Fenves said Friday that the investigation was an "impressive" collaboration between agencies.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the school will continue to reevaluate campus security. Fenves said the university has already increased patrols.
"We believe this is a safe campus," campus police Chief David Carter said.
"The campus continues to grieve. Yes, we feel better that the suspect is in custody, but we continue to grieve," he told reporters.
Weiser's death was the first campus homicide since 1966, when deranged former Marine Charles Whitman made his way to the top of the campus bell tower and shot dead 14 people.
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