PITTSBURGH — Two suspects in the police chase that ended in a car crash at a gas station on Route 51 were charged in connection with a weekend homicide in Pittsburgh’s Carrick neighborhood.
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According to Pittsburgh police, Maurice Nelson, 20, and Amier Windsor, 17, were wanted for criminal homicide in the shooting death of 21-year-old Jacob Dienert on Jan. 8.
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Police said Nelson and Windsor were also involved in the police chase down Route 51 that ended when the suspects crashed at the BP gas station near Woodruff Street. They were apprehended in a nearby creek and a third unnamed suspect was taken into custody inside in BP, according to court documents.
According to the criminal complaint, the car driven by the four suspects involved in the chase and homicide was reported stolen out of Glassport.
Court documents said police were able to identify the car as being involved in the homicide using video footage from the area and observing bloody tire marks at the scene and on the tire of the car involved in the chase.
Because of the car being at the scene of the shooting long enough for the tire to be bloody and because the victim didn’t have common possessions on him like a cell phone or wallet, police said it was determined the victim was also robbed after the homicide.
Windsor told police in an interview that all four were in agreement about robbing Dienert, whom they were meeting up with to buy marijuana.
Windsor, who was a registered missing juvenile out of the city of Pittsburgh, told detectives that an unidentified juvenile suspect provided the driver with a gun, stating they were going to rob the victim.
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Windsor told police that the driver went through his phone to find someone to sell them marijuana.
The driver allegedly exited the car to meet with the victim. After, Windsor told police he heard one shot and the driver got back into the car, tossing the gun to Nelson in the backseat. Nelson then fired two more shots before telling the unidentified juvenile to rob Dienert.
One of the possessions the juvenile took was Dienert’s cell phone and the marijuana. Windsor said Nelson and the juvenile argued about the victim’s cell phone before the juvenile tossed it out of the rear passenger window onto Copperfield Avenue.
Nelson told police a similar sequence of events as Windsor, however, Nelson said Windsor was the one who picked the victim to rob, not the driver.
Nelson also told police that the driver fired a second shot at the victim from inside the car. He said the driver might have exited the car to fire more shots, but he was “out of it at that point.”
In between police interviews, officers learned that Dienert’s family were able to ping his cell phone and found it on Copperfield Avenue. They accessed the data on the phone and found that four minutes before shots were fired, Dienert had communications with a phone number later linked to Windsor.
Nelson and Windsor are each charged with criminal homicide, robbery and criminal conspiracy.
The driver was injured in the pursuit and hasn’t been formally charged. The unidentified juvenile also hasn’t been charged, but both could be, according to police.
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