Houston officer slain at site of repeated calls
Sgt. Harold Preston was watching over a woman whose Tuesday morning plan was to gather her belongings from her estranged husband when her teen son shouted a warning. His father had a gun.
Gunfire quickly followed outside the south Houston apartment. Authorities said the husband fired off several rounds, some of which fatally struck Preston — a 41-year veteran of the Houston Police Department on the verge of retirement — in the head. Another officer, Courtney Waller, was wounded in the arm.
Law enforcement descended on the complex in the 2600 block of Holly Hall across from the Harris Health System as the suspect — also wounded in the exchange of fire — took refuge in an apartment. He was apprehended soon after and is facing a murder charge in Preston’s death.
The fatal shooting, HPD’s second line-of-duty death of 2020 and the second of a local enforcement officer since Friday, follows three domestic violent complaints involving the gunman, identified as Elmer Manzano, 51, since Saturday, according to court records. Those documents show his wife reported him to police at HPD’s Southwest station on Saturday. Waller, the officer wounded Tuesday, encountered the couple during the complaints on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
During the Sunday incident, the
wife said Manzano threatened her with a gun and that he said he would have her deported. Waller left without arresting him and determined, after speaking with a prosecutor, that “no crime occurred.” The prosecutor then declined to accept any charge. Details surrounding the Monday incident were not available.
Minutes before the shooting Tuesday, Waller called prosecutors again to discuss what happened Monday and was told a terrorist threat charge could be accepted against Manzano. Waller ultimately decided — again — that a crime had not occurred, records show. Moments later, officers reported the shooting.
A flurry of shots could be heard in police radio traffic.
“Somebody help me,” Waller said, pointing back-up officers to his location. “I’ve been hit. They
shot me in the arm.”
Authorities found Waller — a three-year veteran of the department — near the entrance to the apartment complex, where a neighbor brought him, police Chief Art Acevedo said during a news conference. The good Samaritan was unable to do the same for Preston, who collapsed outside a door to the apartment, but managed to grab the gun that Waller dropped and return it to him.
The 14-year-old son was shot in the arm during the exchange of fire and is expected to survive.
Manzano, a native of El Salvador, was taken into custody around 10:30 a.m. from an apartment at the complex. He was hospitalized at Ben Taub and is expected to be charged with murder.
Both officers were taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where law enforcement officials surrounded Acevedo and Mayor Sylvester Turner in prayer following Preston’s death. The slain sergeant’s family — his adult daughter, mother, fiance and ex-wife — made it to the hospital before he died, Acevedo said.
“As good as he was as a cop, he was a better human being,” Acevedo said. “We’re going to miss him.”
Dueling narratives of how Waller handled his encounters with Manzano have since surfaced from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and the woman running to unseat incumbent Kim Ogg.
Republican candidate Mary Nan Huffman — currently a lawyer for the Houston Police Officers’ Union — blamed Ogg for the sergeant’s death and said that her office refused to accept charges against Manzano in the prior domestic calls.
“His death was 100% preventable,” Huffman wrote in a news release. “Had charges been accepted, Mr. Manzano might be back on the street, but his gun and ammunition would have been seized and held as evidence. No gun would have meant no dead officer.”
District attorney’s office spokesman Dane Schiller dismissed Huffman’s accusations as politically motivated.
“The only person responsible for this horrible crime is the killer himself and any attempt to blame prosecutors is sadly political and not factual; the record speaks for itself,” Schiller said in a statement.
As authorities packed up their investigation at the apartment complex, neighbors recalled the chaotic moments that followed the shooting. Nothing seemed amiss as the officers spoke to the wife and her son outside an apartment, neighbors said.
At least seven gunshots then rang out. Resident Moaz Elsyied said his roommate exchanged words with a lone officer outside their apartment along Holly Hall. The officer — frantic and bleeding from his arm — told the resident that he had been shot and someone “took his gun.”
In a statement, Houston Police Officers’ Union President Joe Gamaldi said Preston was killed “in cold blood.”
Preston, 65, a member of HPD Academy Class 86, was sworn in as a police officer on Aug. 25, 1979. When he died, he had served 41 years with the department. He worked assignments in Northeast Patrol District, South Central, and Southwest, according to HPOU Vice President Doug Griffith.
Preston had recently been training a new sergeant who had just finished her training Monday, he said.
Preston had been living with and caring for his parents, Griffith said.
“He was a father, a son, a great man,” Gamaldi tweeted. “It’s easy to forget that officers are people just like you, people who love our communities and want to make them better for all. RIP.”