Austin truck driver sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, murdering Army veteran in Dallas
An Austin truck driver is going to spend life in prison after being convicted of murdering a 25-year-old woman and dumping her body in a wooded area near Dallas.
Naasson Hazzard, 28, was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday. There is no parole in federal court.
In February, a jury found Hazzard guilty of kidnapping resulting in death, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Cellphone records revealed Hazzard's trail
During the nine-day trial, evidence showed the victim, Caleigha Zangari, a U.S. Army veteran and mother from San Diego, entered Hazzard's truck in Dallas at 9:27 p.m. on Aug. 15.
Cellphone records indicated that Hazzard remained in a nearby parking lot for 17 minutes after picking her up before driving for over three hours to a wooded area off Highway 11 in Pittsburg, the news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Hazzard then sent a message to his boss saying he would be out sick the next day and remained at the location for almost an hour before completing a workload, authorities said. He later visited the scene with his wife before switching cellphones, deleting Google and Life360 location-sharing accounts and cleaning the truck with bleach.
He also searched online "how many years for first second and third degree murders," while his wife searched for "Pittsburg Texas news," according to prosecutors.
On Aug. 23, agents found the victim's body with a plastic bag around her head and her shattered cellphone on the side of the road.
Veteran and human trafficking victim Caleigha Zangari's convicted killer sentenced to life
Twenty-five-year-old Caliegha Zangari was known to many as a dedicated U.S. Army veteran from San Diego. But to her family, she was a sister, daughter, aunt and mother to her son. Her life was tragically cut short when her body was found dumped in August 2024.
CBS News Texas spoke exclusively to the lead investigators on the case with Homeland Security, who say this case shows the true dangers of trafficking and how authorities are ramping up efforts to fight it.
"I think this case highlights what victims of human trafficking go through every day," said Jason Stewart, the case supervisor with the Homeland Security Investigations North Texas Trafficking Task Force, which headed the investigation and search for Zangari.
He said Zangari became a victim of sex trafficking while working in Dallas as a sex worker. Investigators said she ended up in Dallas, where she met Hazzard at a Dallas truck stop.
"Using historical data from her phone and his phone, we were able to track the route from northwest Dallas up to 635. And as they started heading east, her phone drops off and his phone kept heading east," Stewart said.
Stewart said trafficking in Texas is on the rise, but so is the success of their Task Force.
"Since 2018 or 2019, this task force has conducted over 75 federal human trafficking prosecutions, resulting in over 900 years of sentence time in 18 life sentences," said Stewart.
He hopes Hazzard's life sentence also sends a message.
"I hope that it sends a message that this type of behavior will not be tolerated, and that our victims are human beings, they have dignity, and they have life," Stewart said.
HSI said that in the last month, in Dallas-Fort Worth alone, there are over 80,000 commercial sex ads online. Showing that trafficking is very much present here in North Texas.
Thursday's sentencing hearing took more than two hours to complete, largely because Hazzard spoke for quite a while in the courtroom, claiming he did not kill Zangari. But ultimately, the judge said those statements did not warrant a re-trial.
Some of Zangari's family, her father, little brother, and sister, spoke opening in court. They shared how their lives have turned upside down since her death.
The mother wrote in a statement to CBS News Texas, "Caleigha should still be here, and she should have lived a long and happy life."
