Questions still surrounding the Halloween day death of Trinity University sophomore, Cayley Mandadi appeared to have been partially answered Wednesday when her steroid addled boyfriend Mark Phillip Howerton, 22, was charged with murder, aggravated sexual assault and criminal mischief.
Mandadi a 19-year old cheerleader at Trinity University in San Antonio, died Halloween day, 2017. The following day, Trinity sent out an alert to all students and faculty to be on the lookout for her travelling companion, Mark Howerton, who campus authorities said said was not a student at the university and was declared persona non-grata on campus property.
On the last day of February Mark Howerton turned himself in for the death of the 19-year-old Trinity cheerleader, and was taken into custody.
Cayley Mandadi, died on Halloween last year, after falling unconscious in a car while traveling to Houston. An arrest warrant affidavit for Howerton, her boyfriend of four weeks at the time of her death, has shed new light on the hours leading up to Mandadi’s death.
Howerton according to his attorney John Hunter, ‘is ready and eager to vindicate himself in court. He’s innocent of the charges, and he’s doing the right thing,’ Hunter said.
‘If someone has a warrant out for his arrest, then he needs to turn himself in.’

Mandadi was covered ‘from head to toe’ with red marks, bruises and scratches, according to the affidavit and both of her eyelids were swollen and bruised.
‘The only areas of [Mandadi] with no evidence of injury were her back and the back of her legs,’ the affidavit says.
Such injuries did not line up with Howerton’s claim of ‘rough sex,’ notes the arrest affidavit, but instead line up with ‘physical and violent sexual assault’.
Mandadi was pronounced brain dead on October 30 and taken off life support the next day.
The cause of death for the communication major was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head.

Records have also shown that Howerton had a history of violence prior to this arrest.
During the investigation, Texas Rangers spoke with multiple sorority sisters of Mandadi, as well as her ex-boyfriend and her roommate. All of them said Mandadi had told them Howerton had previously physically abused her and threatened her.
Mandadi’s sorority sister told officials that Howerton had once destroyed the cheerleader’s dormitory room and threatened to throw her off the balcony, adding that  she believed Howerton used steroids because he used ‘roid rage’ as his excuse for destroying the dorm room.
Mandadi’s family released a statement on Wednesday afternoon thanking the Texas Rangers and Beth Smith, a Hays County justice of the peace.
‘We remain utterly devastated by the loss of Cayley. We ask people of faith to pray for her family, friends, and for justice in this case,’ they said.