Before allegedly choking his pregnant girlfriend to death and placing her body in the trunk of his car, a 22-year-old Kansas man searched the internet for information on “weapons that can kill,” choke holds and “snapping necks,” newly released court documents say.
Alexander J. Lewis’ cellphone web browsing history also included inquires about abortion, stun guns, lethal weapons and murder, according to a probable cause affidavit released by a Sedgwick County judge.
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The web searches coincide with the Aug. 26 death of 19-year-old Zaiylah Q. Bronson, a Wichita State University student who had been dating Lewis, 22, since January and was about 16 weeks pregnant with a baby boy. Wichita police last month announced that officers found her body in the trunk of Lewis’ Kia Rio parked outside of his apartment near 21st and Rock after Lewis and his mother both called 911.
A defense attorney for Lewis, who is charged with capital murder in the case, declined to comment on the contents of the affidavit Thursday. Lewis has not yet had a chance to enter a not-guilty plea to the capital murder charge.
According to the affidavit, Lewis killed Bronson in her apartment, 3945 E. 17th St., across from the south side of WSU, after they spent the night fighting. Surveillance video from the apartment complex that was obtained by police shows Lewis parking his Kia outside of Bronson’s apartment building around 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 25. He spent around two minutes “manipulating” items in the car trunk before going to her door, where he was let in, the affidavit says.
Less than 12 hours later, Lewis was recorded by surveillance cameras carrying a blanket-wrapped bundle with feet dangling out from Bronson’s apartment and loading it in the Kia’s trunk, the affidavit says. An ax and a shovel were also in the trunk, which Lewis told police he had been using for storage.
According to the affidavit, Lewis’ troublesome web searches started Aug. 25, when he browsed for information regarding “stun guns, lethal weapons, and ‘weapons that can kill.’”
His cellphone browsing history showed additional searches the next morning for “choke hold,” several for abortion, two for “snapping necks” and others for murder, the affidavit says. He was with Bronson in her apartment for at least some of those.
The apartment surveillance cameras last recorded Bronson alive at 8:13 a.m. on Aug. 26, when the couple took a dog out into the courtyard for a few minutes.
Lewis searched the web for “choke hold” at 8:02 a.m. and for “snapping necks” at 8:51 and 8:52 a.m., the affidavit says. His searches for murder took placed between 10:57 and 11:06 a.m., according to the document.
At 10:15 a.m., Lewis left Bronson’s apartment alone, went to his parked car and moved it closer to Bronson’s door, the affidavit says. He got a black backpack from the trunk of the car and went back inside Bronson’s apartment. Police later found duct tape, bottled water, clothes, flashlights, towels and trash bags inside of the backpack.
At 10:24 a.m., the surveillance cameras recorded Lewis carrying Bronson’s body out of the apartment and at 10:27 a.m. carrying the backpack and the dog. He drove off after that, the affidavit says.
Lewis returned to the apartment briefly at 10:42 a.m. then left again.
Police showed up at 11:36 a.m., after the 911 calls, according to the affidavit.
Authorities tracked Lewis to his apartment using a location ping on his cellphone and arrested him after he answered a knock at his door. He told officers Bronson was in his car trunk, saying: “I got scared. I was over at her place; I didn’t know what to do,” the affidavit says.
He told police Bronson broke up with him earlier on Aug. 25 after an argument. When he went over to her apartment that night, she “was on the phone with another male,” which upset him, the affidavit says he told police.
Lewis told police he argued with Bronson throughout the night and that eventually “he wanted her to stop talking so he ‘grabbed her’” around the neck with his arm and squeezed “until she stopped moving,” the affidavit says.
He told police he panicked, checked for vital signs and then wrapped her body in a blanket he took from her bed when he couldn’t find a pulse or other signs of life, the affidavit says he told police.
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