Speedy legwork by savvy homicide detectives and surveillance footage from multiple locations produced murder charges in the random and seemingly senseless fatal stabbing of a 62-year-old Texas man as he relaxed on a park bench on Labor Day morning.
Benedict Chinedu Ogbodiegwu, 26, has been charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Andrew James Wimsatt, a civil engineer and researcher at Texas A&M, in a park in Round Rock, a northern suburb of Austin.
An arrest affidavit filed Sept 9 and obtained by Fox 7 in Austin outlines what led to his apprehension. The suspect left a trail of clues in surveillance footage from various locations around the crime.
After a woman reported finding Wimsatt’s body in the park around 11:25 a.m. police obtained video footage from a neighborhood HOA.
It “showed a white man in a button-down shirt and dark shorts sitting on the bench about 10:55 that morning,” the outlet reported on Friday.
The report continued:
A couple of minutes later, a black man with a knife in his hand is seen coming up behind the other man, later identified as Wimsatt, and beginning to stab him in the neck while wrapping his other arm around him. Wimsatt is seen on video attempting to push the man off but is unable to.
Wimsatt was stabbed several more times and left on the ground when the suspect wiped the blade on his shift and ran from the scene towards the pool area. More video footage showed the suspect running north of the pool and towards N AW Grimes Boulevard.
The assailant was in a black shirt with red writing, grey sweatpants and dark shoes and had “medium-length braids with light-colored tips and a dark goatee,” according to Fox 7, per the court document.
Another video led detectives to a water fountain near a basketball court where they lifted a palm print.
Hours after the attack, the suspect had visited a McDonald’s restaurant but was wearing a different set of clothes. Video footage from there showed the man getting into a red SUV in the parking lot.
Detectives identified the SUV as belonging to Ogbodiegwu’s family. The vehicle was registered at a home less than a mile on foot from the park.
Detectives spoke with Ogbodiegwu at the home and decided he matched the images captured in the surveillance videos, though he denied being at the park and claimed he had a twin brother.
However, he could not even provide the name of the twin, according to detectives.
A search warrant executed on the residence discovered a “white trash bag inside an outdoor garbage can containing the black shirt, grey sweatpants and black shoes the man in the video was wearing and a 5.5 inch knife with a wooden handle,” according to the news outlet.
The affidavit stated the sweatpants had red stains on them and the blade tested presumptive positive for blood.
Police took Ogbodiegwu into custody Labor Day night, just hours after the homicide.
Coincidentally, Fox News personality Tyrus from the network’s Gutfeld show, knew the victim and paid tribute to him in a post on X.
According to posts from true-crime sleuths on social media, the suspect reportedly had previous encounters with police, though Breitbart News could not confirm that with official sources.
The case has echoes of the allegedly racially-motivated, unprovoked fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee by a repeat offender aboard a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina a year ago.
Detectives believe the Texas attack was random and the two men did not know each other, and no motive for the killing has been determined so far.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
