A Texas man who investigators allege has a “very dim view of women” has been charged with shooting two female drivers and, according to sheriff’s deputies, claimed to have committed similar shootings in the past.
Nicholas Martin D’Agostino, 29, of Katy, is currently charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to records from the Harris County Jail. He is being held in lieu of $200,000 bail on each charge.
Prosecutors, in their motion for the high bond, wrote last week that D’Agostino’s Facebook page is full of rants in which he “rambles on about female motorists and how incompetent they are, and that their sole purpose is to give birth to male children.”
They argued that he continues to pose a threat to the community, particularly female drivers in the Katy area.
Credit: Google
Credit: Google
D’Agostino was initially charged last month with the July 10 shooting of a woman who was shot through the window of her car as she pulled into the parking lot of a car wash in Katy. The arrest affidavit in the case states that the woman, whose name is being withheld, was pulling into the Simoniz Car Wash when she heard a noise and realized her driver’s side window was cracked.
She initially thought it had been struck by a rock, but was surveying the damage when she saw blood running down her arm. That’s when she realized she had been shot, the affidavit said.
The woman, who sat down for an interview with ABC13 in Houston days later, said the bullet entered near her left shoulder, went straight through her arm and lodged in her chest. Doctors told her the bullet stopped just millimeters from her heart.
Here from the victim in the ABC13 interview below.
"I just feel like I'm a miracle," the mother of two told the news station. "To get shot in the arm, to have it travel into your chest and the bullet still be in your chest, and to walk away and to be speaking with you three days later. I mean, I feel like it's just one of God's miracles, I do."
The woman told Harris County deputies that she wasn’t involved in any confrontations prior to the shooting.
An investigator went to the car wash and obtained surveillance video, in which he could see “some manner of disturbance” in a green Ford Explorer driving by the victim’s vehicle with the passenger-side window open. The disturbance appeared to be “quick movement or a muzzle flash,” the court document said.
The Explorer had mismatched bumpers, as well as a distinctive spot of oxidization on the front passenger-side corner of the hood, the affidavit said. Using a law enforcement database to narrow down green Explorers manufactured between the years 1996 and 2000 that were registered in the zip code where the shooting took place, investigators found a green 1996 Explorer with mismatched bumpers registered to D’Agostino.
D’Agostino lives about 100 yards from where the shooting took place, the affidavit said.
The investigator found D’Agostino’s Instagram page, on which he posted several photos of guns, including a .45-caliber handgun, the affidavit said. It was believed to be a .45-caliber weapon that was used to shoot the victim.
The investigator met with D’Agostino, at which time he allegedly confessed to shooting the woman.
“The defendant gave a consensual statement in which he reported that he shot the complainant due to her swerving into his lane twice, and that he believed it was self-defense,” the affidavit said.
D’Agostino also admitted to five previous situations in which he shot at other vehicles, the affidavit said. The investigator recovered a .45-caliber Baretta handgun that D’Agostino told him was used in the July 10 shooting.
D’Agostino made his $75,000 bond on Wednesday, but was arrested again the following day after another aggravated assault charge was filed against him. The second charge came after an investigator in the first case recalled a similar shooting that took place on March 7, court records said.
Hear from the July 10 victim’s husband in the ABC13 interview below.
In the March case, a woman was pulling out of a Shell gas station parking lot on Katy Freeway, about five miles from the location of the July shooting, when she heard a loud noise and felt a pain in her right arm, according to an affidavit filed in that case Thursday.
“She did not realize until later that she had been shot,” the court document said. “She stated that immediately after she was shot, she saw a white male in a dark green older model sport utility vehicle looking at her as he drove by, and that it appeared he was looking to see if he had hit her.”
As in the July case, at the time of the March incident, D’Agostino lived close to where the shooting took place.
When questioned about the March attack, D’Agostino also admitted to shooting that woman, the affidavit said.
“(He) stated he did so because she struck his vehicle with her vehicle and then purposefully swerved at him another time and stated he ‘discharged (his) weapon’ at her in order to stop what he perceived as a threat,” the court document said.
Court records said that D’Agostino has been potentially linked to at least three other shootings, but court records show no charges have been filed in those instances. No one was injured in those shootings, the records said.
The husband of the July 10 shooting victim expressed relief that the alleged gunman is back behind bars.
"It was the hardest thing I ever had to do was tell her that he was out, and knowing what kind of feelings she was going to experience when I told her that," the man, who ABC13 did not identify, said Friday. "It was the most frightening 48 hours of our lives."
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