Zoe Hastings, the 18-year-old woman found dead of "homicidal violence" earlier this month, was stabbed to death and left near a Dallas creek, according to new information released in court documents Tuesday.
A search warrant affidavit released Tuesday afternoon contained several new pieces of information in the murder investigation, including a report from a witness who reported seeing a man and woman arguing before the man entered her vehicle and forced her into the passenger seat.
The affidavit also said the woman's body was found in a creek area near her crashed minivan, not inside the van as previously reported. Dallas police previously said the van crashed into a speed limit sign after leaving the Walgreens.
More notable in the affidavit was the disclosure that Hastings had been stabbed to death. Previously, police would only say that the victim suffered obvious signs of homicidal violence. No further detail was given.
A man acquitted of sexual assault earlier this year in Texarkana, 34-year-old Antonio Lamar Cochran, has been arrested and charged with capital murder in the case after his DNA turned out to be a match for DNA recovered at the crime scene, police said.
Dallas Police DepartmentPolice have not charged Cochran with any sex crime related to the Hastings investigation.
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The search warrant directed officers to seize all knives and cutting instruments from an apartment on the 5300 block of Amesbury Drive, believing the weapon used to kill the teen may have been stored at the residence.
Cochran, according to the affidavit, had been living in the apartment on Amesbury Drive with a man and woman.
Officers were to also search for any instrument that could be used to incapacitate a person while also recovering blood, fingerprints, hair, DNA, tissue, fibers and electronic devices.
Cochran has a long rap sheet with arrests and convictions dating back 15 years for crimes that include assault, theft and burglary. As recently as February 2014, he was arrested in Bowie County, Texas after being accused of raping a teenage girl in a car. The District Clerk’s Office confirms that the case went all the way to a jury trial this January, where Cochran was acquitted.
Cochran, who is currently being held at the Dallas County Jail on a capital murder charge, has retained lawyer Paul Johnson as counsel. Being a capital murder charge, he could face the death penalty. His bail is set at $2.5 million.
Cochran declined to be interviewed by NBC 5 in Dallas-Forth Worth Monday.
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