NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — Police have arrested a man accused of multiple crimes, including killing a woman in a crash while evading police and holding another woman at knifepoint to steal her vehicle.
Austin Taylor Meade, 26, of North Las Vegas, Nevada, walked into the Austin Fire Department Friday morning to turn himself in, police confirmed to KVUE. APD said Meade waited at the fire station until police arrived to arrest him.
The arrest comes after an Austin public information officer said APD was in a pursuit with a stolen vehicle -- which matched the description of Meade's stolen car -- around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, but lost visual in South Austin in between William Cannon and Ben White.
It all started on Wednesday at 8 a.m. when New Braunfels police were notified by a San Antonio company that one of their work trucks had been stolen and they had tracked it down to an apartment complex on West County Line Road in New Braunfels. When police responded to that location, they said the truck driver fled the apartment at a high rate of speed, later running a stop sign and colliding with another vehicle. The driver, 39-year-old Amber Rachelle Williams of New Braunfels, was killed.
Immediately after the crash, police said Meade exited the truck and fled on foot into Fischer Park. There, it was believed he flagged down another driver for a ride. Police said a female driver voluntarily gave him a ride to her home on Blazewood Drive, where he allegedly threatened her with a kitchen knife and stole the keys to her vehicle.
Police said Meade then fled in her 2012 Kia Forte with license plate number DT6-R476 and a pink "On the Grind" sticker on the back windshield.
Meade is charged with first-degree murder. His bond has been set at $1,000,000.