A teenager suspected of killing a man committed suicide while turning himself in, after his mother urged him to give himself up to authorities.
The suspect, an unidentified 17-year-old boy in Katy, Texas, confessed to murder before pulling out a gun and shooting himself in the head in the presence of his mother and a sheriff’s deputy, according to the Associated Press. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition and died later that day.
The victim he confessed to killing was 25-year-old Army veteran James Ayala, who was dating the same girl as the teenage suspect. When the suspect received a call from his girlfriend, in which she told him that she was seeing another man, he got into an altercation with Ayala, which ended in the suspect pulling out a gun and fatally shooting Ayala.
When the teenager’s mother found out what had happened, she told him to turn himself in, and managed to convince him to drive to the sheriff’s substation several hours after the shooting took place. It was there, in the parking lot of the station, that the suspect shot himself after admitting that he had killed someone, notes Washington Post.