Missouri City man sought in April slaying of guard

A Missouri City man is at large after he was charged Wednesday in the April murder of a guard at the San Luis Resort in Galveston, according to court documents.

Brandon Ledford was one of three men allegedly behind the late-night car robberies that led to the gunfire that left security worker Phillip Mollis dead, police said in a sworn statement.

A valet on the hotel’s sixth floor spotted three men breaking into cars in the back lot on April 9. The valet tipped off the 23-yearold guard, who headed outside to confront the men as the valet watched from above.

Mollis approached the men with only a flashlight in his hand, but one of the suspected robbers pulled out a gun and opened fire before fleeing on foot, headed west. The other two suspects ran north through the lot before disappearing, authorities said.

Less than an hour later, Galveston police picked up a man who appeared to be hiding in a small fenced area off 53rd. Tyronne David Haynes was wearing clothing that matched the valet’s description of one of the suspects and he admitted to police that he’d been burglarizing cars and had fled when he heard gunshots, according to charging documents.

The 22-year-old, who police previously identified as a documented gang member with Gorilla Mob 187, refused to identify his co-conspirators. But another witness fingered Ledford and a man known as Marcus “Fetti” Moffet as the friends Haynes was hanging out with the night of the killing, authorities said.

The day after the shooting, investigators recovered a hoodie, latex gloves and a gun from a backyard in the 3200 block of Heron, just over 1,000 feet west of the crime scene. The weapon, police said, was “strikingly similar” to one shown in a picture on the phone police confiscated from Haynes. Mollis died April 15. A week ago, a forensic analysis determined that Ledford’s DNA was a possible match to evidence on the latex gloves.