Investigation

A man suspected in the robbery of the East 42nd Street Pizza Hut and the sexual assault of one of its employees was found dead in a motel room at the Executive Inn Tuesday morning, according to police on scene and a news release from Odessa police Cpl. Sherrie Carruth.

An employee at the motel found Anthony Carter unresponsive in room 109 at the motel, 2505 E. Second St. The employee called police at about 8:49 a.m.

Odessa police officer Colby Kea said they came to the motel after 8:45 a.m. and found a dead man in the room. Though he gave limited information at the scene, he said it didn't appear to be a homicide.

Carruth later said there were no signs of foul play, but officers did find cocaine in his motel room. The cause of death was undetermined.

Executive Inn manager Hash Patel said he remembered Carter checking into the motel at 3 p.m. Monday. Tuesday afternoon, after another employee found him dead, he tried asking what was going on but he said few people were giving him any information.

Patel said nothing raised any red flags in Carter's behavior.

"Very good person, nothing wrong with him," he said.

Family members gathered at the motel that afternoon, becoming emotional when Carter's body was taken out of the motel room, covered in a red sheet on a stretcher and loaded into the medical examiner's SUV by about 1 p.m.

Anthony Richardson, Carter's cousin, said police hadn't told him at the time the body was Carter's, but Richardson knew Carter was at the motel. Richardson also said that after speaking to Carter on Monday, Richardson suspects Carter committed suicide.

"He told me I wasn't going to see him no more, ‘I don't want to go back to the penitentiary,' " Richardson said. "He just did 15 years in the pen."

Carter's niece Shaniqua Clay said Carter barricaded himself in the motel room before 4 p.m. Monday. She also said the car belonging to a woman who reported a robbery and sexual assault at the Pizza Hut on East 42nd Street was there at the time.

"He's been dead since 4 p.m. yesterday," Clay said. "He did that thing at the Pizza Hut yesterday."

A woman there called 9-1-1 just after noon Monday and told police that a man went to the Pizza Hut at 3824 E. 42nd St, took an unknown amount of money, then took her in her own Chevrolet Blazer to another location where he sexually assaulted her, police reported that day. The man then took her vehicle.

Carruth said in the release that the car was found unoccupied at 4 a.m. Tuesday in a parking lot at 222 N. Dixie Blvd.