Police suspect man in 3 attacks

Esme

Barrera, 29, was the second of three women assaulted by Brown early Jan. 1, police officials said Thursday. Investigators said Brown attacked another woman less than an hour before breaking into Barrera’s home in the 3100 block of King Street just northwest of the University of Texas campus.

The young woman had celebrated New Year’s Eve at the nearby 29th Street Ballroom and walked home alone but was found badly injured inside the house by a friend about 2:35 a.m. She was later pronounced dead by paramedics.

DNA was not found at the scene, nor was it collected from the first attack, police said. But homicide Detective Brett Bailey said circumstantial evidence ties Brown to the slaying. Records from a computer at his apartment complex show he was out of the building at the time of the assaults, he said. Detectives also used financial records to match a bloody shoe imprint found on the sidewalk outside Barrera’s home to the soles of $200 Ecco shoes bought by Brown. The pair was not recovered, but Acevedo called the shoe print the “smoking gun.”

The Travis County dis-