Left: Tyrique Williams (Pulaski County Jail). Right: Annie Lock (Fayetteville Police Department).
Authorities have arrested a U.S. Army soldier from North Carolina during his basic training after he allegedly murdered his pregnant girlfriend, ditched her body in a pond and married another woman two months later.
Private First Class Tyrique Zavier Leroy Williams, 26, stands accused of first-degree murder and concealment of death in the slaying of 24-year-old Annie Lock, who was last seen in August and found dead on Sunday in a pond near the intersection of State Road 72 West and Buie Philadelphus Road in Red Springs, a town located around 115 miles southeast of Charlotte.
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Lock was last seen Aug. 17 on Kiana Lane in Fayetteville but not reported missing until Oct. 10, the Fayetteville Police Department said in a press release. Local NBC affiliate WRAL spoke with Lock’s family who said Williams told them in August that he would file a missing persons report. Her family also had cops stop by Williams and Lock’s apartment but he said she wasn’t home.
But some two months later, not only had Williams allegedly failed to file that report — he had also married another woman.
“I found out in October because I questioned him. I said ‘have detectives reached back out to you in reference of anything?’ He said ‘I didn’t file a report,”” her sister Tanya Lock told local ABC affiliate WTVD.
Her family reported her missing. Family members told WTVD that she was five weeks pregnant when she disappeared.
On Sunday, deputies from the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office recovered Lock’s badly-decomposed body from the pond in Red Springs, roughly 30 miles from Lock’s last known location.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division arrested Williams at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was completing his basic training with the 35th Engineer Battalion, a spokesperson told Law&Crime in an email. He was then transported to the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office where he remains in jail awaiting extradition back to North Carolina. WTVD reports Williams arrived at the Army base on March 12.
The last few months have been excruciating for Lock’s family.
“I found out this on my birthday that my child was gone,” Tanya Whitehead, Lock’s mother, told the TV station while fighting back tears. “You took someone away from her family. She never did anything wrong.”
Cops have not released a cause of death or a motive for the slaying. Neighbors of the couple said they did not get along very well.
“They would be outside pushing each other and stuff like that,” a neighbor told WTVD.
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