Police are investigating the shooting of two teenage girls in a small Texas community along the Gulf of Mexico. KRIS reporter Lindsay Curtis has the story.
By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News
Two teenage girls in a relationship were found with gunshot wounds to the head in a south Texas park, with one of them dying from her injuries, media reports say. Police were searching for their assailants.
Mollie Judith Olgin, 19, and Mary Christine Chapa, 18, were found in knee-deep grass in a nature area in Portland by a couple Saturday, said Portland Police Chief Randy Wright, who confirmed to msnbc.com details first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller Times.
Olgin, originally from Ingleside but recently living in Corpus Christi, died; Chapa, of Sinton, was rushed to a hospital where she had surgery and was in serious but stable condition on Sunday, local NBC affiliate kristv.com reported. Wright said Chapa was still in the hospital on Monday.
Friends told kristv.com that the girls had been together five months. Wright said he didn’t have any information about their relationship, noting that “we understood from their friends that they were (in a romantic relationship). I know from … Mollie’s parents that they were very close.”
When asked if police had been able to determine if the girls' sexuality played any role in the shootings, Wright told msnbc.com: “That’s always something that we’re looking for, but as of this point, we have not been able to establish that that had anything to do with the attack.”
He said they had been in communication with Chapa. He noted all indications were that “third parties” were involved in the assault.
“If we had a name, you know, we’d be having a different conversation right now. But we have not been able to gather enough information to identify a suspect yet,” he said. “It appears as if … this was not just a random attack but that’s something that we really have to develop over time.”
Wright said police had recovered a bullet casing from a large-caliber gun at the scene, but they haven’t found the weapon. A resident living nearby reported hearing two loud bangs Friday before midnight but believed they were from firecrackers, the newspaper said.
The park, more of nature area with some parts overgrown and no lights, was generally frequented by visitors during the day. It is located along a bluff overlooking a bay, Wright said, with some homes situated nearby.
“We’re not really sure how they got to the point that they were found,” he said of the girls. “It is a scenic overlook with a wooden deck and there is a place at the edge of the deck where you can actually go down a very steep incline into a grassy area that leads down to the shoreline and that’s where they found.”
Friends of the girls gathered at a local high school on Sunday. Olgin's roommate, Samantha Garrett, told kristv.com that the fun-loving couple hadn’t gotten any negative responses to their relationship and could not think of why anyone would want to harm them.
The crime rate is low in Portland, a bedroom community of Corpus Christi on the Gulf of Mexico, Wright said. The last homicide occurred two years ago.
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