By Calvin Palmer
Police yesterday arrested a man who allegedly shot dead a British tourist during a robbery at a bar in Texas.
Ray Carlos Cisneros, 25, of Lubbock, was taken into custody at a truck stop near Interstate 40 after a police hunt lasting nearly 19 hours.
Police allege that Cisneros shot two men at the Spotted Pony bar in Amarillo, robbed patrons and sexually assaulted a woman on Thursday evening.
He fired multiple shots, and one bullet struck the torso of British tourist Thomas George Reeve, 28. Another patron, a 48-year-old man, was shot in the hand.
Reeve died at Northwest Texas Hospital. His body was taken to Lubbock, where an autopsy was performed yesterday.
Sgt Kevin Dockery, of Amarillo’s special crimes unit, said Reeve was in the bar with two friends. They had rented a car in California and stopped in Amarillo on a trip to Florida.
Police say Cisneros took purses, wallets and money from the bar’s cash register. He forced one woman to remove some of her clothing and sexually assaulted her.
At one point, the bandana Cisneros was using to cover his face slipped down allowing patrons to recognize him as having been at the bar earlier in the evening.
Cisneros is being held in the Potter County Detention Center on a capital murder charge. His bail has been set at $1 million.
[Based on reports by the Amarillo Globe-News and Houston Chronicle.]
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