by BRAD ROLLINS
San Marcos Mercury
The Hays County Sheriff’s Office has identified the Wimberley shooting suspect arrested Friday following a standoff with SWAT. He is 19-year-old Caleb Crow.
Crow was in the process of burglarizing a neighbor’s vehicle shortly before noon Friday when the neighbor confronted Crow and was shot in the abdomen, said Sgt. Phillip Taylor, the sheriff’s spokesperson.
The 44-year-old neighbor, who authorities have not named, was listed in critical condition at University Brackenridge Hospital in Austin but is expected to survive his injuries.
Crow is charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of theft of a firearm. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon is a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison; theft of a firearm is a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison.
The charges stem from what Taylor describes as a crime spree that began Friday morning when Crow hit his mother on the head with a dumbbell at the home they share on Rader Ranch Road. The mother fled to the Dollar General at 125 Carney Lane, where she called the sheriff’s office; she was taken to the hospital and later released.
While deputies were still investigating the family violence assault, they received a 911 call about a shooting outside a different home on Rader Road near the Crow residence, Taylor said.
The man who had been shot said he was sitting in his house when he saw someone he did not know riffling through a vehicle parked out front. When he went outside to challenge the intruder, Taylor said, Crow shot him with a .45 pistol he had stolen from a different home in the neighborhood. When deputies later searched the house next to Crow’s, they found a dog Crow killed during the burglary.
Crow was arrested at about 4 p.m. Friday after a four-hour standoff with Hays County/San Marcos SWAT and crisis negotiators. Capt. Mike Davenport told the Mercury yesterday that authorities used tear gas to force Crow from the home.
Crow is being held at Hays County jail. Bail was set this morning at $250,000.
This story was first published by the San Marcos Mercury, and reprinted here through a partnership between the Hays Free Press and the San Marcos Mercury.
