Texas man who fatally shot Moroccan man in unfamiliar car in driveway charged with murder

A Texas man who reacted to an unknown car in his driveway by fatally shooting the driver was charged last week with murder.

The man, Terry Duane Turner, 65, was arrested Friday and charged with murdering Adil Dghoughi, the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies had responded to reports of a shooting in Martindale, about 40 miles south of downtown Austin, at around 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 11 and found that Dghoughi had been shot in his car. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Turner told police that he had awakened in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and saw a car he wasn't familiar with in his driveway, NBC affiliate KXAN of Austin reported, citing an affidavit.

Turner said that the car's headlights were off and that he went to get his gun. When he went back to check on the car, the headlights were back on, and the car “began to rapidly accelerate in reverse," the affidavit said. Turner chased the car, broke the driver's side window with his gun and then shot through it, it said.

When he called police, he said “I just killed a guy” and “tried to pull a gun at me, I shot.”

Police did not find a gun in the Dghoughi's Audi.

Dghoughi immigrated to the U.S. from Morocco in 2013 and received a master’s degree in financial analysis from Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which is advocating for a thorough investigation.

After Turner's arrest, CAIR-Austin Executive Director Faizan Syed said: “We welcome the arrest, but our work is not done. We will continue to advocate for justice for the family of Adil Dghoughi and for all the families in Texas and nationwide impacted by gun violence.”

“Stand your ground laws across our nation have a history of being used to commit legal violence against people of color,” Syed said. “This incident is tragic to the family who lost a loved one under suspicious circumstances. We call for an independent and transparent investigation into the killing of Mr. Dghoughi, who was unarmed and in his car when shot.”

CAIR hosted a vigil for Dghoughi outside the State Capitol in Austin on Saturday. A GoFundMe campaign for his family has raised $45,000.

Turner posted bail and was released, said Kyle McConnell, a patrol lieutenant with the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office.

CAIR and Dghoughi's family expressed their frustration that it had taken more than a week to arrest Turner.

“Why did it take them 10-days to make the arrest?” his brother, Othmane Dghoughi, asked KXAN.

Othmane Dghoughi said the family believe his brother might have gotten lost while driving from Austin to his girlfriend's home in Maxwell, just north of Martindale.