Family seeking justice for teen killed in July
Mystery still shrouds the death of girl, 14, shot by ex-neighbor
Alana Mock jolted awake around 2:30 a.m.
Her 14-year-old daughter, Layla Ramos, hadn’t come home, so Mock grabbed her cellphone.
“Where are you at?” she texted. “Please come home I’m worried.”
An hour later, Layla sent a cryptic reply. She was at Walmart.
Mock tried to call her daughter, but Layla’s phone was dead.
She had a hunch, though, where Layla might be. Back when Layla used to stay out all night, before she had gone through rehab, she used to crash at a house in Atascocita that belonged to a former neighbor.
She’d find her in the morning, Mock thought, as she fell back asleep.
But the morning would be too late.
In Atascocita, across town from Mock’s Aldine home, Anthony Valle called 911 to report an intruder breaking into his house, according to a written dispatch log obtained by the
Houston Chronicle under the state’s open records law.
Valle fired twice, hitting and killing the intruder. Then, he told the 911 operator, he realized the intruder wasn’t a stranger.
“It’s Layla,” he said to operators. “She was a friend.”
Mystery still shrouds the fatal shooting on July 20. Valle, 43, has not been charged in connection with Layla’s death and has not responded to requests for comment.
The case remains under investigation by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Gilliland.
But as Mock and other family members grieve Layla’s death, they also want answers about why she was there and what happened.
‘Not a little girl’
Mock, 35, raised Layla and her three siblings in the Atascocita neighborhood where she grew up, a few streets over from the house in the 19900 block of River Brook where Layla died.
A playground is down the street. Signs proclaiming “We love our children” line the roads, cautioning drivers to slow down.
The teen was known in the neighborhood for her dimpled smile and sunny disposition.
She eschewed school but loved animals, bringing home stray cats and dogs that her mother and stepfather didn’t know what to do with.
She was feisty, said her aunt, Carmalita Lugo, 41.
But Layla’s childhood was far from idyllic. In 2014, at age 11, she was left in the care of her grandmother and stepfather when her mother landed behind bars for nine months for theft and evading arrest.
Layla spiraled out of control despite the family’s efforts, and Mock said her daughter was unrecognizable when she returned home in late 2015.
The once-cheerful Layla — whom Mock called baby girl until the day she died — was thin and had started doing drugs.
Mock shook her head recently as she searched for words to describe what her daughter had become.
“She was just strung out, all the time,” she said.
Layla posted photos on Instagram of alcohol, pills and hundreds of dollars in cash.
Layla became friends with Valle’s teenage daughter and visited the house frequently. For a time, neighbors thought she lived there. Valle even drove her to visit her mother in jail.
“We thought he was a good guy,” Mock said.
By then, the once-easygoing teen had become combative, once getting into a physical fight with her mother at Valle’s house when Mock tried to take her home, the mother said.
“This is not a little girl who wants to play with Barbies anymore,” Lugo said several days after the girl’s death. “This is a little girl who wants to run in the streets and physically fight with her mother to get her way.”
In September 2016, Mock uprooted the household to get her teenage daughters away from the Atascocita neighborhood.
In April, she sent Layla to a juvenile rehab program for a second time.
Back to Atascocita
This time, rehab seemed to stick.
Layla, who turned 14 in March, was excited to start eighth grade at Hambrick Middle School in Aldine ISD in the fall.
She appeared sober. She seemed to spend her days at home, watching her 6and 3-year-old siblings.
After more than two tumultuous years, the teen was ready for normalcy, her mother said.
Then Layla found her way back to Atascocita.
In the predawn hours before she died, Layla sent a series of texts to her sister, Angelica Morales, 19, and her mother.
She said she was with someone but did not identify the person. The texts were shared with the Chronicle by Mock and Morales.
“Dnt say I’m wit him if he calls u,” she sent in a text to Morales around 1:30 a.m. Then she texted a response to her mother around 3:30 a.m.
“I’m barely at Walmart,” she texted. “He was waiting for someone to drop off the money.”
Gilliland said investigators have since obtained cellphone records and surveillance video from that night.
By 5:15 a.m., Layla was at Valle’s house, dead on the floor of his back bedroom with gunshot wounds to the neck and torso.
Mock unknowingly sent her husband to Valle’s house about 7 a.m. that morning to look for the teen.
He found deputies at the residence instead.
“I called (Alana) crying before I even knew it was Layla,” said Daniel Mock, 34.
Valle initially told the dispatcher he didn’t know why Layla was in the house, according to the call log. Then he told the dispatcher she wanted to take his cellphone.
“She was lying about him,” according to the call log describing the conversation. “And he had recordings of her saying she was lying.”
The log does not include any additional details.
Valle was questioned after the gunfire, but no charges were filed, Gilliland said.
Pushing for answers
Family and friends gathered a couple of days after the shooting at a relative’s house, selling barbecue plates, drinks and cookies to raise funds for a funeral they wished they weren’t planning.
An uncle grilled meat at the side of the house. Others seasoned chicken and cut up sausage in the kitchen.
Daniel Mock said he struggles to believe Layla is really gone. One of the stray dogs his stepdaughter used to feed still comes by the house, and he leaves food for it, as if Layla would come back soon to take care of the animal, he said.
He and Alana Mock can’t get beyond Layla’s final moments. They can’t reconcile her death with the enthusiasm she felt at returning to school and her plans for the future. She wanted to become a makeup artist.
“In my heart,” Layla’s mother said, “I knew she was going to be OK this time.”