By Andy Sevilla

Two weeks after a crime-victim counselor for the Kyle Police Department was found shot to death in Bastrop, no arrest has been made in the apparent murder. 

Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office said on Tuesday the investigation is ongoing. The agency is following up on leads but no suspect has yet been identified.

Samantha Elizabeth Dean, 29, was found shot to death behind a vacant shopping center in Bastrop on Feb. 4.

An affidavit for a warrant to search Dean’s Austin home revealed Dean was found shot to death and with a black plastic bag around her head. A preliminary autopsy report states Dean was shot three times in the head. 

A Bastrop County Sheriff’s deputy was conducting a routine patrol at about 2 a.m. Feb. 4 when he came across a black Dodge Charger with its door open sitting near the dumpsters at the years-vacant Shoppes at Colony Village, according to officials.

That’s when Deputy Bryan Reyes found Dean unresponsive lying next to the car, officials said in a statement. The affidavit revealed the back seat of Dean’s Dodge Charger had been removed, and it appeared Dean’s body had been moved; therefore law enforcement is unsure where Dean may have been murdered. 

Bastrop deputies believe there was an attempt to modify or stage the crime scene, according to the affidavit. 

The Austin Police Department (APD) has suspended one of its officers while they investigate his relationship with Dean.  

An attorney for APD officer VonTrey Clark told KXAN his client had nothing to do with Dean’s murder.

“Officer Clark had nothing do to with the death of Samantha Dean,” Bristol Myers, Clark’s attorney, said in a Feb. 13 statement. “If investigators believed so, they would have searched his home and his vehicles and obtained a DNA sample from him.”

Myers went on to say that he didn’t think investigators have any hard evidence pointing to any single suspect, and that several other APD employees have been questioned. 

Aside from serving as KPD’s crime-victim services coordinator, Dean also volunteered as a crisis counselor at APD. The Austin-American Statesman reported that sources close to the investigation have said investigators are looking into the possibility that Clark may have been the father of Dean’s unborn child. 

Dean was seven months pregnant when she was killed, according to her obituary in the Hays Free Press last week. Dean’s father, Kelvin, said Dean had named her unborn child Madeline. 

“The family will never recover from this,” Kelvin Dean told the Hays Free Press last week. “Eventually we’ll be stronger from it … but there’s a void in the family now that cannot be replaced.”

Kyle Police led a procession escorting Dean’s body to San Antonio Feb. 7. Many friends and supporters lined bridges crossing I-35 from Austin to San Antonio paying homage to the fallen KPD worker as the procession transported Dean to her final resting place. 

KPD officers served as pallbearers at Dean’s funeral service Feb. 13 at Community Bible Church. Dean’s burial followed at Sunset Memorial Park.