A Texas man threatened to burn his 73-year-old mother alive when she refused to give him money and threw an “acidic substance” and a Molotov cocktail at police officers when they arrived to arrest him the next day.
James Andrew Woerner, 38, faces a multitude of charges for the incident that began on Friday when he broke into his mother’s home and demanded she withdraw money from an ATM for him, KENS reported. She refused, and he threatened to burn her alive, then forced her into a car, court documents say.
Inside the car, he hit her and threatened to crash, killing them both.
The elderly woman leapt from the moving vehicle to escape her violent son.
Woerner’s father tipped police off to his location on Saturday but warned that his son had threatened to throw “nitric acid” on officers. When police arrived, he did throw some kind of acidic substance on an officer that began to “sizzle” when it hit the ground. As he threw more acid, he yelled, “Everyone is going to die!” and lit an incendiary device and threw it at the officers.
Three police officers sustained minor injuries.
While officers protected themselves from the attack, Woerner barricaded himself inside an apartment complex building and refused to come out until SWAT officers forced him out, according to KSAT.
News reports only named the aggravated assault against a public servant and obstruction charges and not those for the initial attack against Woerner’s mother, but jail records say he was charged with intentional bodily injury to an elderly person and assault on a family member. The mother’s condition was also not reported. Woerner was given a $40,000 bail.
