The wild turn of events started about 1:45 a.m. Saturday when Morgan’s Point police approached a vehicle parked at the marina.
The red late model Ford Mustang was parked near the fuel tanks when police used a spotlight to check the interior of the car. The man inside the car ducked down and appeared to be reaching under the seat so officers retreated, Morgan’s Point Police Chief Randy Dixon said in a press release. When they did, the man sped away.
Police chased the car at high rates of speed through residential areas, into the Temple city limits, onto Texas Highway 317 into Belton, Dixon said. Belton police joined the chase.
The driver led police down Main Street in Belton, turning east onto Sixth Street and entered the southbound lanes of Interstate 35.
State troopers joined the chase for a while but stopped just south of Salado.
Deputies from Williamson and Travis counties and Austin state troopers also chased the car. The driver crashed the Mustang south of Austin, police said.
As officers approached, the suspect shot himself in the face, police said.
Inside the car, police found a number of explosive devices, numerous amounts of ammunition, a rifle and a handgun.
Austin Bomb Squad dismantled the devices at the scene on I-35.
Because of the car’s contents, police evacuated residents within a half-mile of the Hawthorne Court home. Fifty to 60 homes, including some with medically challenged individuals and elderly, were evacuated at about 6:15 a.m., Dixon said.
A warrant was served on the man’s Morgan’s Point residence at about 10:30 a.m. A federal ATF agent, bomb technician and bomb detecting dog, and members of the Fort Hood Explosive Ordnance Detachment Team checked out the house before police officers were allowed to enter.
Morgan’s Point Volunteer Fire Department and Scott & White Memorial Hospital EMS stood by, Dixon said.
On Saturday afternoon, one of the man’s neighbors didn’t want to talk to the newspaper but yelled out, “He won’t be missed around here - I can tell you that!”
Tammy Hembree, another neighbor, explained, “He has had some real conflict with some neighbors. A lot of that is based on the fact that he is not a traditional middle-class American. He was a homeless man for over a decade. Prior to that he was homeless during some period of his childhood.
“He went to the military and he was injured. It wasn’t a war accident, it was a mechanical accident and that incapacitated him as far as military service. He did not receive disability for a long time and then all of a sudden he got his disability, which was a huge sum of money that he waited for. He waited for over 10 years.”
He purchased the Morgan’s Point home about 18 months ago.
“I think a lot of his behaviors were based on his fight or flight existence as a homeless person. You know, people really picked on him,” she said.
“I knew several things about him. He said some things that you wouldn’t usually hear from neighbors. He was very quiet, you never heard a peep out of him,” she said. “He spent a lot of time making his house look nice. He put up the fence to stop the deer eating his grass and they ended up telling him to take the fence down because he didn’t have a permit.
“People would call the police on him for anything. He liked to squeal his tires. You have to understand he didn’t have a lot of things in his life. He got a couple of cars and he liked to hear his tires,” she said.
Hembree is a mom, but said she never feared the man.
“At Christmas he bought a bunch of blankets and took them to a homeless shelter, and toys for the disadvantaged youths. He would cut the elderly people’s grass across the street for no charge. He just wanted to be left alone. I have heard him be insulted while he was standing in his yard. It was almost a pastime for some neighbors to speak ugly about him,” she said.
“He didn’t react in a good way a lot of times. He would overreact and he wouldn’t try to talk to people and work it out. He wasn’t attacking other people, it was usually in response to what had been done to him.
“He wasn’t integrated into society, he slept in bushes. He worked for a long time during his time of homelessness for Church Under the Bridge in San Antonio. He gave his heart and soul working for the same kind of that people he was.”
Hembree said her family stayed neutral in the community conflicts.
“It’s a shame. If he had bought his house somewhere else when he got his check I do not think he would have had the same outcome,” Hembree said. “He knew about the Bible. A lot of times homeless people only have the Bible. He was treated like he was an outcast, when he really didn’t do anything. I think it’s a disgrace, if only we could have left him alone.”
Residents were allowed back into their neighborhood at about 12:30 p.m., Dixon said.
The suspect is in a critical condition in an Austin area hospital. The 48-year-old man’s name has not been released by police.
The Texas Rangers in Austin are conducting the investigation.
