Laurionne Walker Pasadena Texas girl shot dead by Raymeon Means during argument over spilled water at residence. String of tragedies over a week.
A 6-year-old Texas girl was fatally shot by an adult male relative following an argument over spilled water at a Pasadena residence according to reports.
Laurionne Walker, 6, was shot multiple times and died at Bayshore Medical Center in Pasadena from her injuries, police said.
The police department in Pasadena, southeast of Houston, said officers responded to reports of a shooting at an apartment complex around 11:30 a.m. Friday, NBC News reported.
Raymeon Means, 35, faces a capital murder charge in connection with the shooting.
Means fled the apartment Friday morning but was later caught and taken into custody. He remains in jail without bond, police said.
Second tragedy over course of one week
The adult’s connection to the six year old girl was not immediately explained by police but ABC13 Houston reported Means is related to the person who rents the apartment.
A capital murder charge is defined by the Texas Penal Code as an offense under the murder statute and in the commission of another crime, including the murder of someone 10 years or younger.
If convicted, punishments range from life in prison to the death penalty. It was not immediately known whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty.
‘I’m at a loss for words right now,’ Earline House, Laurionne’s grandmother, said. ‘My granddaughter was still a baby. She got shot twice in the chest this morning.’
A neighbor, Mauricio Alvarez, said Means knocked on the door to ask ‘if you have water coming down because the little girl clogged the toilet,’ according to Click2Houston.
He said Means left and he soon heard arguments from the apartment.
‘[Later] he went running upstairs, and we heard like 4-5 shots, and he started running, and we started hearing screams,’ Alvarez said.
Laurionne’s mother said that the girl was left in the care of a relative so she could attend a vigil for 28-year-old Porschia Branch and her three children, who died Sunday week ago in a crash.
Laurionne’s mother was the aunt of three children who died in a car accident in Spring, Texas, marking the family’s second tragedy in a week. All four victims were thought to have died as a result of a drunken driver slamming into their vehicle.
Damien House, the brother of Laurionne’s mother, offered words of comfort to his sister.
‘All I can say to my sister, ‘I’m here for her,’ House told KPRC. ‘I can imagine what she’s going through because we’re all going through the same thing.’
House is the father of the children who passed away in the Spring crash.
‘I am out of words. I’m choked up right now,’ said Earline House, the grandmother of all the children.
