Tipster Leads to Arrest in Highwayman Murder of Texas Mother – Crime Online

A Texas man was arrested last week in connection with a road rage shooting that killed a mother of four early last month.

San Antonio police responded to a rollover accident on Interestate 35 around 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 8 and found 31-year-old Julie Marie Butcher inside the vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head, KSAT reports. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

A witness reported seeing the driver of a small blue and silver sedan shooting at Butcher’s vehicle, and surveillance video showed a glimpse of the suspect vehicle as it fled the scene after the shooting.

Later, an anonymous tip said a man named “Nick Hernandez” admitted to a close friend that he was the shooter and said he was driving a Volkswagen Jetta on Nov. 10. Police identified him as 24-year-old Nicholas Hernandez and learned he was the shooter after reporting a robbery about 15 hours after the shooting.

Hernandez told police that he was robbed while playing basketball by a man who took his Beretta 9mm handgun, a black duffel bag and a basketball. But when police executed a search warrant at Hernandez’s home, they found the duffel bag and basketball he had reported stolen.

By mid-month, police had asked three witnesses to provide statements. According to an affidavit, one of the investigators told investigators that he was playing basketball with Hernandez and others at the time of the alleged robbery, but gave a different location for the basketball game. He also said Hernandez never mentioned anything about a robbery.

Another said Hernandez confessed to being involved in a road rage incident in which there was a shooting and the victim’s vehicle rolled into a ditch.

The final witness said Hernandez came to his home and asked him to dispose of two spent 9mm shell casings that he had taken from his Jetta and that were later confiscated by police.

The affidavit also states that Hernandez’s phone records and recordings showed his phone near where the Nov. 8 shooting occurred and records from the Jetta showed it being at the last man’s home after the shooting Witnesses found.

Hernandez was arrested Wednesday and charged with murder. No bail has been set.

According to an obituary, Butcher was a mother of four and the manager of a Papa John’s branch.

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(Image: Julie Marie Butcher/Chapel Hill Funeral Home and Nicholas Hernandez/Bexar County Sheriff’s Office)