A Texas man is facing multiple charges after, allegedly shooting dead a 19-year-old girl at a college party following an argument over the rules of beer pong.
Ronald McNeil, 39, of College Station, is charged with murder, deadly conduct for discharge of a firearm, and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the May 3 shooting that left 19-year-old Lacie LaRose dead.
McNeil allegedly fired 15 shots outside the home on San Benito Drive at around 3am. A bullet struck one man in the leg and another was struck in the arm by shrapnel, but LaRose was fatally shot in the neck.
She was pronounced dead at around 5am at the College Station Medical Center, NBC reports. LaRose, a student at Blinn College studying animal sciences, attended a May 2 house party along with many others gathering to watch the Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao fight on TV, KWTX.
The 39-year-old McNeil, who lives just across the street from the home, showed up to the party uninvited along with his group of friends, The Eagle reports. ‘It was a little strange that they were at the party but they were really nice, at first, congratulating me on graduating,’ Landon Duke, a guest of honor at the party who was celebrating his pending graduation from Texas A&M University, told The Eagle.
The party died down after the fight and its more than 100-person attendance dwindled to 20 or 30, witnesses told The Eagle.
Around 1am the next morning (Sunday) McNeil, a convicted felon, and some of his friends were playing beer pong with some of the college-age guests. Witnesses said that one of McNeil’s friends argued with one of Duke’s friends about the rules of beer pong — a drinking game in which players attempt to throw or hit table tennis balls into cups of beer.
When the argument got heated, McNeil and his friends were asked to leave the home, The Eagle reports. Duke and some of his friends attempted to escort the group out. Duke said the argument eventually led to a brief exchange of blows, but he said that the fight was over pretty quickly. McNeil told police that as he and his friends left, some of the party-goers yelled racial slurs, WTAW reports.
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