Man Accused in Teen's Highway Shooting Death Faces Charge in Earlier Road Incident

A man accused of fatally shooting a Missouri teenager on a highway now faces a federal charge connected to a second shooting at a vehicle, according to court documents. Both incidents involved gunfire aimed at cars on busy roads in the St Louis area.

Alyssa Wilson, 17, died after being shot while driving on Interstate 170 in Overland, Missouri, on 14 October. Prosecutors said she was headed to Boo at the Zoo, a Halloween event at the St Louis Zoo, when a single shot was fired into the back of her Buick Encore. The bullet struck her in the back and incapacitated her, and her car then crashed into a concrete median. She was pronounced dead at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

The suspect, Willie James Herndon, 43, of Texas, had no known relationship to Wilson. Her father, Robert Hickman, spoke when state charges were announced. "Alyssa was 17, excited about her life, excited about her future," he said. He added that she was 60 days from turning 18 and that the family had been preparing for a first vacation together to Disney, where she hoped to meet her favorite character, Princess Tiana. "This was a senseless act," he said.

A federal criminal complaint now links Herndon to an earlier episode. On 11 October, St Louis metropolitan police received a report that a vehicle had been shot just after leaving Interstate 55 in Missouri. Surveillance footage showed a white SUV driving away from the scene, and its appearance matched Herndon's Buick Enclave. Investigators also recovered a shell casing there. Prosecutors said they are running ballistics tests to determine whether it came from the same weapon that killed Wilson.

The complaint describes how prosecutors tracked what appeared to be Herndon's Enclave from the 11 October shooting to the scene of Wilson's death on 14 October, and then to a Days Inn in Caseyville, Illinois, on 16 October. There, prosecutors approached Herndon's wife, Taiya Herndon, 45, and were speaking with her when Herndon came out of the hotel room and began to run. Prosecutors said he was "screaming words about a shooting" as he was arrested.

Inside the hotel room, prosecutors said they found an ABC-15 rifle in plain view. They also reported finding ammunition matching the type used in the shooting of Wilson, a receipt from a gas station near where she was killed on Interstate 170, two license plates, and handwritten notes describing police vehicles that Herndon believed were tracking him.

Federal prosecutors in Illinois have charged Herndon with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Separately, he faces charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in St Louis county, Missouri. His federal public defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment.