Marine Arrested in Student's NYE Road-Rage Murder

A 20-year-old US Marine stationed in Arizona has become the only person arrested in the New Year's Eve road rage shooting of University of North Texas student Sara Mutschlechner. Eric Jamal Johnson, a corporal who has been in the military since 2013, was taken into custody at the Marine air station in Yuma, which is more than 1,000 miles away from Denton, Texas, where Mutschlechner was shot dead, CNN reports. A police spokesman says the 20-year-old student was shot after a "verbal confrontation" between passengers in her car and men in an SUV, reports the North Texas Daily.

The police spokesman says that after the SUV pulled up, it was an "amicable conversation to begin with, but quickly went downhill and some derogatory statements were made toward the female occupants of [Mutschlechner's] vehicle." He says shots were fired from the SUV after male passengers in Mutschlechner's car reacted angrily to the "very derogatory" remarks, which were of a "sexual nature," reports CNN. Investigators say some members of both groups had been at the same party before the 2am shooting. Police haven't named Johnson as the shooter or said whether there will be more arrests, reports WFAA, though they have said that he was seen with a handgun inside the vehicle before the shooting. (More Texas stories.)