Police arrested a man in Louisiana on Wednesday, January 11 for the death of an elementary school teacher in Texas. She was found with multiple gunshot wounds in her backyard last week.
Charvas Thompson was arrested in a house in Shreveport, Louisiana on January 11, over 260 miles from Texas, for the murder of the teacher, Wendy Duan, 28.
According to the Sugar Land Police Department, Thompson was arrested after detectives gathered enough evidence to identify him as the shooting suspect. The department worked with the Gulf Coast Violent Offender Task Force and Louisiana police to take the suspect into custody. Police suspect that he had been in Louisiana for two days before his arrest.
Duan was an elementary school teacher with the Alief Independent School District. Police discovered her dead with multiple gunshot wounds at her home on Oxford Mills Lane in Sugar Land, Houston, on Saturday, January 7.
At the time, police said she had been shot dead during a domestic argument, and they had identified the suspect and were searching for him.
Thompson and Duan met a week before her murder on the “Meet Me” dating app.
Mark Poland, Sugar Land Police Chief, urged people to stay vigilant, especially when meeting strangers on dating apps. He said the fact that people do not know the person they are going to meet and what they are hiding should make them take extra precautions, like letting family and friends know where they are going and who they are meeting with.
The police chief also said it was safer to meet in a public place as you are trying to get to know each other.
According to the police, the fatal shooting happened at Duan’s house at around 10 pm on Saturday. Witnesses told police that the two argued in the house, and the argument moved to the backyard. Shots rang out shortly after they went outside.
Neighbors called 911 with reports of a shooting. Responding officers found Duan dead in her backyard with several gunshot wounds. Thompson was nowhere to be found.
Detectives got to work and identified Thompson after reviewing surveillance videos, talking to witnesses, and confirming his car from cameras in the area.
Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Thompson early Sunday morning, charging him with murder. Thompson’s bail was set at $500,000.
According to Sergeant Matt Levan with the Sugar Land Police, Thompson is awaiting extradition from Louisiana back to Texas, where he is charged with murder. The extradition process could take weeks or months, according to the sergeant.
Thompson has a criminal record starting in 2018, when he was charged with theft in Harris County, a drug charge in Montgomery County, and a 2022 misdemeanor in Harris County for family violence.
According to the School District, the slain victim was a language arts teacher in the third grade at Boone Elementary School. The district released a statement expressing its sadness over the tragic passing of Duan, who had been working at the school since 2017.
