Hitchhiker murdered over petrol money
A driver has been accused of murdering a hitchhiker because he refused to help pay for the petrol.
Blake Little, 34, gave Ken Tillery a lift home in his pick-up truck after agreeing on a price of €5.60 for petrol.
But Texas sheriff Tom Maddox said the price went up during the trip, first to €28 and then €57 by the time they reached Pineland, about 130 miles from Houston.
Tillery, 44, tried to run away without paying when the truck stopped at a filling station near his home.
The truck’s occupants, the driver and three other men, chased him and a fight ensued. Tillery was apparently held captive before he was run over, investigators said.
Little, 34, of Jasper, was arrested on murder charges. Investigators believe both drugs and alcohol were involved.
Jasper is the same town where James Byrd was murdered three years ago when he was chained by his ankles behind a truck and dragged for nearly three miles along a bumpy country road until he was dismembered and decapitated.
In that case, Byrd was black and the men in the truck were white.
In the current case, the victim was white and the four men in Little’s truck were black, Sheriff Maddox said.
‘‘It’s too early in the investigation to tell whether it was racially motivated, but it’s still very much under investigation,’’ Maddox said.
