Killing is blamed on fight over shoes
Man fatally shot near basketball court in Spring
Nicole Sanders stood at the stove cooking rice for her son Darius’ favorite meal — burritos — when a neighborhood boy burst into her Spring-area home shouting that Darius had been shot.
Sanders rushed out of the house and into the car so fast she forgot to bring her 16-year-old daughter, who followed on foot to the neighborhood basketball hoop. They found Darius Flournoy, 22, lying on the sidewalk. Authorities later said the former Spring High School offensive lineman had been shot by an acquaintance following a dispute over a pair of shoes.
First responders tried to insert a breathing tube and stem the bleeding from gunshot wounds to the 6-foot, 245-pound man whom his mother called a
“gentle giant.”
Sanders could see her son moving, but constable’s deputies from Harris County kept her from getting close. Once Flournoy was loaded into an ambulance, she said, a constable’s deputy held her back from approaching the vehicle.
She wanted to tell her son not to be scared, that God was covering him, that she loved him. A family member’s video shows her wailing, “My baby! I want to hold my baby!”
He died at the hospital a short time later.
“Why couldn’t I be with my baby in his last moments?” she asked Tuesday, tears welling in her reddened eyes. “The way it was handled, I wouldn’t wish that on any parent.”
Honor culture
Witnesses told investigators Flournoy was walking toward the dead end of Spring Mill Lane with Ja’Corrie Rogers, a 20-year-old acquaintance from a nearby subdivision. The two knew each other from high school and had argued years ago over a girl, Sanders said, but Monday’s dispute was about the footwear the young men had swapped.
“From what I understand, he had his slippers and Ja’Corrie had my son’s shoes,” Sanders told KPRC-TV. “They were gonna swap back. He was gonna give him his slippers back.”
As they walked by the basketball hoop about 6:45 p.m., police alleged, Rogers pulled out a handgun and shot Flournoy multiple times. Neighbors said they heard at least five gunshots.
Authorities said Rogers fled in his car, prompting a search for a suspect they called armed and dangerous.
Sometime Tuesday, Rogers surrendered to authorities, according to Sgt. Ben Beall with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. He was charged with murder and was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail.
Flournoy was not the first Houston-area resident believed to be killed over shoes.
Joshua Woods, 22, was slain a few days before Christmas 2012. Four men were convicted of killing him after they followed him home from the Willowbrook Mall, where he’d bought three pairs of Nike Air Jordans at $185 each. One small pair was meant to be a Christmas gift for his young son.
In 2008, 17-year-old Alan Nickerson was sentenced to life in prison without parole after he told police he’d robbed and fatally shot an off-duty reserve deputy constable because he wanted money for new tennis shoes.
Shootings and slayings driven by seemingly petty disputes help drive violence among young men. Social scientists such as Yale University sociologist Elijah Anderson say this happens because of a pervasive honor culture.
In the book “Code of the Street,” Anderson argued that such violence follows informal rules of honor, respect and revenge. The harsh etiquette means that disputes over shoes or even a disrespectful look can quickly escalate to violence.
A day after Monday night’s deadly encounter, the shoes that apparently spurred the dispute lay where Flournoy had left them at his mother’s house.
Sanders sat on her front porch, leafing through a photo album of her eldest child’s first years. As the first grandchild on both sides, Darius was doted on constantly by his grandparents, she said.
Cookies, then the court
Flournoy showed an early love for football even though his mother discouraged it. She finally let him start playing in middle school. He played all four years at Spring High School, making the varsity team as a sophomore.
Nicole Sanders said her son had baked cookies for the family just a couple of hours before he’d gone out to the neighborhood basketball hoop.
She remembered arriving to the scene Monday night.
A law enforcement supervisor said she could follow the ambulance to the hospital in their own vehicle, she recalled. But Sanders said that when she was about to drive away, she was stopped again by a constable’s deputy who opened her car door and pulled her keys from the ignition. The minutes dragged on before deputies let her leave for the hospital, where Sanders soon learned her son was dead.
The second in command of the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s office, Chief Deputy Donald Steward, said the department could not comment on Sanders’ grievances before receiving a written complaint, as Texas law requires. He said residents can file complaints with the internal affairs division.
“Every scene is fluid,” Steward added. “Circumstances vary. There is no script.”
‘Never a negative vibe’
Sanders said many of her son’s teammates had stopped by to offer condolences.
A friend who played with Flournoy from seventh grade through high school graduation said he was encouraging and supportive.
“There was never a negative vibe with him,” Treymon Ray said. “Anything you could think of in a good teammate, he was all of the above.” Ray said Flournoy had visited with him, his wife and their baby on Christmas Day.
The victim’s sister, 16-year-old Destini Sanders, remembered cracking jokes with her brother. They would see who could be funnier; she said she was, sticking out her tongue as she tried to joke about her brother.
A family friend set up a small memorial on the blood-stained sidewalk where first responders tried to save Flournoy’s life, including a sheriff ’s deputy who lives in the neighborhood and performed CPR on Flournoy until paramedics arrived.
One of Sanders’ coworkers set up a fundraising webpage for Flournoy’s funeral expenses: www.gofundme.com/tv-in-memory-of-darius-flournoy.
Sanders said her son had friends in the neighborhood and got along well with most people.
“He’ll make a friend before an enemy,” she said, unwittingly talking about her son in the present tense.