Man arrested for having sex on Ferris wheel killed in carjacking
HOUSTON -- The Houston man who gained international attention for having sex while on a Las Vegas Ferris wheel in February was killed in a carjacking Saturday morning.
At about 5 a.m. Phillip Panzica was shot and killed inside of his fiancee's vehicle after leaving an adult entertainment club, police said.
The two suspects, Bryant Christopher Watts, 28, and Aaron Jones, 31, were arrested hours later and have been charged with capital murder.
According to Houston police, Panzica was in the driver's seat of his former fiancee's Kia Sorrento and she was in the passenger seat at the time.
The victim's former fiancee, Mistie Bozant, told police the two suspects were sitting in the backseat when Watts told Panzica to "come clean" before shooting him multiple times.
Bozant told KHOU-TV, that the night before Panzica's murder, he was bragging about the money they'd made off an interview with Inside Edition to the two men now charged with his murder. Bozant claims she had the $4,000 check from that interview and cash in her purse the night Panzica was killed.
"Philip didn't even have time to talk, the guy just shot him five times in the head," Bozant said.
Witnesses said they saw the suspects exit the vehicle, pull Panzica's body from the car and leave him in the roadway before demanding his fiancee to get out of the vehicle.
Bozant says she tried to save Panzica.
"I was like, 'baby, stay with me.' I could still see his heart beating, but his eyes were just glassy," she said.
Panzica died on the scene and the two suspects are now facing capital murder charges.
Hours after the shooting, officers spotted the black Kia Sorrento speeding down a roadway and pursued the vehicle, according to police.
Watts was driving the vehicle and admitted to police that he was involved in the carjacking and fatal shooting.
Both suspects had large amounts of cash in their possession.
The victim was in news headlines in February for having sex with a woman while on a Ferris wheel in Las Vegas. Bozant said she forgave Panzica for the incident.
Bozant said the two had actually planned to get married on that trip. She thinks an argument they had set him off.
"I thought that I was pregnant, and that's what we got in a fight about," Bozant said.
She hopes what happened in Vegas won't be the headline people remember. Now she's fighting for justice for the man she once loved.
"They deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law in my eyes," she said.
Bozant says she and Panzica had broken up, but not because of what happened in Vegas. She says he was getting ready to take a job out of state, and the two had grown apart.