HOUSTON, Texas — A robbery outside a convenience store in southwest Houston ended with a single gunshot late on Saturday night. Houston police say three men tried to rob a man outside the Quick Food Store on Bissonnet Street, and a friend of the victim stepped in while the robbery was still under way and shot the one suspect who was armed. The wounded man was struck once in the chest and died at the scene.
Officers were called to the store at 11:25 p.m. on Saturday, November 7, after reports of a shooting outside the Quick Food Store in the 8900 block of Bissonnet Street, near South Gessner Road, in the Braeburn area of southwest Houston, according to the Houston Police Department.
Source: FOX 26 Houston
What police say happened outside the store
Lt. Pulido of the Houston police told reporters that three men confronted a man outside the store and tried to rob him. One of the suspects was armed with a Glock handgun and took personal property from the victim while the robbery was in progress, police said. Everything the police have described about the three men is, at this stage, the investigators' account of an alleged robbery — no one has been charged in connection with it, and the men who fled have not been publicly identified.
Source: KPRC 2 Houston
While the robbery was still going on, a friend of the victim approached the group and fired one shot, Pulido said. The single bullet struck the armed suspect once in the chest. The man went down outside the store and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have not released his name.
The two other robbery suspects ran from the scene on foot. The robbery victim and the friend who fired the shot then left together in a vehicle, police said. Authorities said everyone involved in the confrontation appeared to be in their 20s, and it was not immediately clear whether the two groups knew each other before Saturday night.
Source: Particle News
Homicide detectives take over the case
The Houston Police Department's Homicide Division and its Crime Scene Unit are leading the investigation. Detectives are reviewing surveillance footage from the convenience store and interviewing witnesses to piece together the robbery and the shot, and to identify everyone who was there — the two men who ran, and the victim and his friend who drove away.
By Sunday, police had released no name for the man who died and had announced no arrests. The identity of a person who dies in a case like this is normally confirmed through the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences before it is released publicly, once family members have been notified.
Anyone with information about the two men who fled, or about what happened outside the store, is urged to contact the HPD Homicide Division or Crime Stoppers of Houston. Store surveillance video is expected to show the robbery and the shooting, police say, but detectives still need witnesses to come forward.
A busy late-night corridor in southwest Houston
Bissonnet Street is one of southwest Houston's longest and busiest commercial corridors, running for miles past the strip centres, restaurants and small stores of the Braeburn and Sharpstown areas — neighbourhoods where many of Houston's immigrant families live and run businesses, and where convenience stores stay open late to serve shift workers, cab drivers and truckers moving through the city at night. A robbery at a store door at 11:25 p.m. is exactly the kind of crime that store owners, clerks and customers along this corridor plan their nights around avoiding.
Under Texas law, robbery — taking property from a person by force or threat — is a felony, and a robbery committed with a deadly weapon is aggravated robbery under Penal Code sections 29.02 and 29.03. Texas law also recognises, in Penal Code section 9.33, that a person may in defined circumstances use force, including deadly force, to defend a third person. Police have announced no decision about charges against anyone in this case, and whether the single shot fired on Saturday night was legally justified is a question for the investigation — and, as is standard in Houston shooting cases, potentially for a Harris County grand jury — not something officers decided at the scene.
What happens next
Three threads are now open at once. Detectives are working to identify and find the two suspects who ran from the store. They are also working to confirm the identities of the robbery victim and the friend who fired — the pair who left together in a vehicle — and to interview them. And the dead man's identity will be released once it is verified and his family has been told. Until that work is done, the case file stays open, and police say the surveillance video and witness accounts will decide what charges, if any, follow.