Updated 9:10 p.m.: A teenage suspect in a St. Louis area murder was arrested New Year’s Day in Houston, according to authorities.
Licking Police Chief Scott Lindsey said a Licking officer spotted the suspect’s vehicle around 7:30 a.m. Thursday and followed it to Houston for backup. The vehicle matched the description from a Warren County statewide alert following a New Year’s party in Wright City, where a man was fatally stabbed and another man suffered critical injuries. The alert was released just 35 minutes earlier.
With support from a Houston officer, Matthew Marshall, 18, and his mother were apprehended and taken to the Texas County Jail and the Cabool city jail. They were believed to be headed to visit family in West Plains. The mother was later released.
Another suspect in the stabbing, Matthew Johnson, 18, was arrested by St. Peters police on Interstate 70 in the early morning hours. Marshall and Johnson have been charged with felony assault.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the trouble began when a female friend of the suspects called the two from a party and said she was upset how she was being treated and wanted to leave. The duo walked into the party, attacked two men and left in Marshall’s vehicle.
Fernando Melgar, 31, of Wright City, was dead when officers arrived around 1 a.m. Raymond Post, 45, of Warren County was tranported by helicopter to an area hospital, where he is in critical condition, according to the Post-Dispatch. Both men were stabbed multiple times in the chest, abdomen and back.
Johnson and Marshall are being held in the Warren County Jail on $250,000 bail each, according to the Post-Dispatch.