HOUSTON – Authorities have arrested an Uber driver accused of fatally shooting a Houston pastor during a suspected road rage incident.
Deshawn Longmire, 23, was taken into custody on Friday and charged with murder in the June 24 shooting of Rev. Ronald K. Mouton Sr., records with the Harris County Jail show.
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Witnesses told police that they saw the two men arguing while stopped at a light on the Gulf Freeway access road, according to court records obtained by KPRC, KSAT’s sister station in Houston.
Longmire was driving for Uber at the time and was in his black Honda sedan, while Mouton was driving his white BMW.
Neither of the drivers exited the vehicle during the argument, but when the cars began to move, Longmire “stretched his arm out of the driver window with a pistol in his hand,” the court documents state.
He then allegedly shot Mouton and drove off, according to investigators.
Surveillance footage from a nearby attorney’s office showed Mouton crashing his BMW at a curb. He died at the scene.
Crime Stoppers of Houston and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee announced a reward for information leading to the shooter’s arrest in the days after Mouton’s death.
Lee said that she’d known the pastor for years and that he “was just an innocent man traveling on a road near his church where he worked all the time,” KPRC reported.
An investigation connected Longmire to the shooting and data from Uber showed he was in the area at the time of the incident, according to KPRC.
He was booked into the Harris County Jail on a $500,000 bond.
“We are grateful for all the love and concern the community continues to express,” the Mouton family said in a statement to KPRC. “The horrific loss of our beloved, Rev. Dr. Ronald Mouton, Sr. is painful beyond words. We are still grief-stricken over this senseless tragedy. We want the man who took his life to understand the seriousness of his crime. He took the life of a husband, a father.”
He had been a pastor at the East Bethel Missionary Baptist Church for 30 years.
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