A Texas man allegedly yelled a homophobic slur before firing a barrage of shots that struck and killed a gay woman during an argument in a gas station forecourt, according to court documents.
Bradley Jacob Stanford, 23, has been charged with the first-degree felony murder of Akira Ross at a Circle K gas station in Cedar Park, near Austin, on 2 June, a charging document shows.
A witness who was with the couple saw Mr Stanford get into a verbal exchange with Ross, 24, after her girlfriend Tanya Gasaway went into the convenience store, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by KXAN.
The suspect “began to get agitated” and went to his car to retrieve a firearm, and Ross went into the store to warn her girlfriend that he was “waving a gun around”, the witness told investigators.
Ross went back outside and continued to argue with Mr Stanford, who then pulled a gun from his waistband, shouted an anti-gay slur and fired three shots and fled the store.
Officers from the Cedar Park Police Department arrived at the Circle K at about 10pm and found Ross next to her black Nissan sedan “lying on her back in a pool of dark red blood”.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Mr Stanford was arrested two days later in Ingleside, near Corpus Christi, by a San Patricio Sheriff’s Office tactical response team.
He was booked into Williamson County Jail on a murder charge.
Ross’s grieving father Anthony Hill told KVUE that he believes his daughter’s homicide was a hate crime.
“I just want people to stop hating on people for whatever they decide to do in life,” Mr Hill told the news station.
“You know, because at the end of the day, we are the same. No one is better than the next. No one is worse than the next.”
Ross’s grandmother Carolyn Hartman told KVUE: “She loved people, and she had her way of showing her love to people.”
The witness told police that the couple had been in a minor quarrel over a food order that had caught Mr Stanford’s attention.
Surveillance footage from the gas station shows Mr Stanford walk over to Ross where they appeared to “have an exchange of words”.
According to figures from the FBI, there were more than 10,500 hate crimes recorded in the United States in 2021, a 12 per cent increase from the previous year.
Around 16 per cent of those were due to the victims’ sexual orientation.
