Leslie Allen Merritt Jr., the man suspected to be the one behind the Phoenix freeway shootings on I-10, was in court Saturday where police said they linked his gun to four of the 11 cars hit during the spree using ballistic tests.
Merritt, 21, was arrested in Glendale, a suburb west of Phoenix at around 7 p.m., said Daniel Scarpinato, a spokesman for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, according to CBS News.
While in court, Merritt insisted that he wasn't responsible for the shooting spree, claiming that he was the "wrong guy" and that his gun had been in a pawn shop for months.
Despite his testimony however, investigators used new found evidence to dispute his claim, reported the Guardian. Detectives test-fired weapons from various local pawn shops at the state lab, and then cross-referenced the findings with what was found on four of the cars involved in the shootings.
Tom Mangan, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who has been assisting in the investigation, noted that a bullet contains land and groove impressions after it's been fired that are unique to a particular gun. Using this knowledge, investigators determined that the bullets and bullet fragments from four incidents came from a gun owned by the suspect, according to the Associated Press.
Merritt's bail has been at $1 million and he has not yet been formally charged.
Even though police have one suspect in custody, the investigation still continues, since, as their findings show, the ballistics from the gun allegedly used in the shooting only matches up to four of the 11 shooting incidents.
