Murder-carjacking suspect captured in Kansas: police
By Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) - A man accused of killing his girlfriend and another woman in Mississippi last week was captured on Wednesday after he crashed a stolen car while being chased by police on a highway in Kansas, authorities said.
Alex Deaton, 28, also wounded at least three people in a multi-state crime spree, and is facing criminal charges in three states, including the two murder charges in separate Mississippi counties, police said.
The night before his capture, Deaton stole a car from a couple he held at gunpoint in Albuquerque, New Mexico, leaving the man with a bullet wound in his buttocks, said Raymond Duke, the undersheriff in Rankin County, Mississippi.
By Wednesday morning, Deaton was leading police on a car chase through Pratt City, Kansas, Duke said. After police wrecked his vehicle's tires using spikes, Deaton ran into a convenience store and shot the clerk, leaving him in critical condition, Duke said.
He then stole the clerk's car from the store's parking lot, according to the Rankin County Sheriff's Office, which initiated the manhunt. About three hours later, police from the Kansas Highway Patrol caught up with him in a highway chase that ended with Deaton crashing and his car catching fire, the sheriff's office said.
A photograph circulated by the Kansas Highway Patrol showed the car blackened from fire and upside down in a field beside the highway.
Deaton appeared in a booking photo circulated by the Rankin County Sheriff's Office wearing only one sock, a hooded top unzipped halfway to expose a tattooed chest and what appeared to be a small cut on his forehead.
It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
Officials in Rankin County said Deaton would be charged with murder for strangling his girlfriend, Heather Robinson, 30, last week in her apartment in Brandon, a small city near Jackson, before fleeing in her white sport utility vehicle.
He later shot and wounded a woman jogging in a nearby park, police said. He is also being charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a woman on Thursday at Dixon Baptist Church in nearby Neshoba County.
A white SUV was seen in the church's parking area for several minutes around the time of the woman's death, the county sheriff said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
