18-year-old suspect behind bars months after young dad robbed and killed yards away from torched car

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — An 18-year-old high school student is charged with capital murder, accused of robbing and shooting a young father, then setting his car on fire.

Javier Gonzalez-Arzate is currently being held in the Harris County Jail with no bond.

Investigators say on Feb. 24, Angel Gabriel Hernandez agreed to meet Gonzalez-Arzate to sell him some marijuana and THC cartridges but robbed and shot him instead. After Hernandez was killed, Gonzalez-Arzate allegedly used Hernandez’s phone to text his girlfriend, Morgan Vershier, to ask for money.

“I suspected something wasn’t right, because he called me Mia and my name isn’t Mia,” Vershier, who spoke only to Thursday afternoon, said.

She remembers texting with someone she thought was Hernandez but investigators believe was actually Gonzalez-Arzate, sensing something wasn’t right.

“I asked him, like, ‘Are you OK, because you don’t sound right?’ And he was, like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just mad because I got in an accident.’ And I was, like, ‘OK,'” she said.

Now, Vershier is raising the couple’s daughter Gabriela without her dad.

“It’s bittersweet,” she said. “She has his eyes and his temper.”