2 held in killing during carjacking attempt
HPD: Men tried to snatch BMW at gas station, shot woman
Two men suspected of killing a woman during an attempted carjacking at a Houston gas station were charged Thursday, the Houston Police Department said.
Jermia Guillory, 20, and D’Marquis Boone, 24, were charged with the Monday capital murder of 30-year-old Kiesha Price. She was sitting in a silver BMW at a gas station at 11249 Bissonnet Street when two men approached her.
Surveillance video released earlier this week shows a pair of men bicycling up to the BMW moments after Price’s boyfriend and his uncle got out of the car around 11:30 p.m. and entered the gas station. After a brief struggle, one of the men — identified by HPD as Guillory — fatally shot Price.
The two men then fled on their BMX-style bicycles, police said.
HPD Chief Art Acevedo said Thursday that police have “a pretty solid case” against the two men.
Price was originally sitting in the back seat of the car but apparently moved to the front.
Price’s family told local media earlier this week that she had a 5-year-old son.
“We definitely want to make sure (her son) is taken care of, because he’s the one who was to live without a mom just as I have to live without a sister,” Tyrone Price, Kiesha’s brother, told KHOU. “Just because someone didn’t think about the family aspect of it.”
Police have voiced similar anger about the crime.
“This is an absolutely senseless, vicious act by two cowards,” Houston Police Department Lt. W.L. Meeler said earlier this week.
The two men were also charged with evading arrest Thursday, court records show.
Boone was convicted as a 17-year-old for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, court records show, an offense for which he was sentenced to five years in prison in 2010.
A surveillance video shows the suspects approaching the vehicle from a spot where they hid around the building.
After he heard the shot, Faisal Kazi, a store clerk, said he turned around and saw one of the men still pointing the gun at the front seat. Then the two suspects fled. Kazi called an ambulance and put pressure on the wound, which he said was in the woman’s pelvic area.
“I didn’t know how to react,” Kazi said. “I was little scared.”
Meeler said this week it’s possible that the attackers thought the car was empty.
The suspects simultaneously opened both the front driver and passenger side doors before the shooting, the video shows.