Officials: Boy shot to death during argument

Police Chief Troy Finner on Tuesday vowed investigators would find the man who shot and killed a 12-year-old boy the day before and pledged the full support of the department to those living in the Sunnyside area where the shooting happened.

Finner asked for the community’s help in identifying a shooter, telling those gathered that the gunman was in his late teens. But Finner declined to provide a name, asserting detectives had more work to do.

“We will use the full force of our regional partners to bring this person into custody,” he said during a news conference.

Officers around 11 p.m. Monday responded to a report of shots fired in the 4100 block of Barberry Drive, finding a boy with multiple gunshot wounds, officials said. He later was pronounced dead.

Finner on Monday said witnesses told detectives the boy had been walking home from a convenience store with friends when they got into an argument with a man. During the argument, the man pulled a gun and fired multiple times, police said. Detectives allege the man then fled into an apartment complex.

The boy attended a nearby charter school — Pro-Vision Academy — less than 2 miles away from the site of the shooting, Finner said. The chief offered prayers Monday to the boy’s classmates.

The chief noted the department’s clearance rate for homicides hovered around 80% for 2023 as evidence that they would soon make an arrest in the boy’s death.

The clearance rate comes several years after investigators were only solving around 49% of homicides. Each year since 2020, the division’s clearance rate has improved — in 2021, it was around 58% (or 50%, according to the FBI’s rating system); in 2022, it rose to 75% (or 63%, according to the FBI); and the department is on track to clear around 80% (or 68%, according to the FBI) through May of this year, according to data provided by the department.

The Houston Police Department and the FBI’s systems for calculating a clearance rate differ.

Both count arrests as cleared cases. But the city also considers any case that has been referred to a grand jury being cleared. Both the FBI and Houston rates show an improvement after a low in 2020, officials said.