2 armed suspects fatally shot in 12 hours
In span of 10 days, 6 police shootings have claimed the lives of 5 people
Law enforcement officers shot and killed two armed suspects in separate parts of Harris County in a 12-hour span ending Thursday morning — dramatic incidents that also wounded an innocent bystander and a police officer, snarled rush-hour traffic on a busy Houston highway and left a Spring neighborhood shaken by a late-night SWAT standoff.
The two shootings — one late Wednesday and the other hours later as commuters were driving to work — were the fifth and sixth police shootings in 10 days. Five were fatal.
Law enforcement officials said the spate of shootings was unusual, but can be the outcome when dangerous criminals confront officers.
“Whenever violent crimes are occurring out there, we’re tasked with pursuing and apprehending those responsible,” said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. “That’s inherently dangerous, and sometimes there’s an increased probability of someone getting seriously injured or killed. We just have to remain vigilant, and hopefully it’s an outlier, and not a routine thing.”
Two of the dead suspects had serious criminal backgrounds, with one slain man having spent 15 years in prison for assaulting a peace officer. The other had threatened police with a machete seven months ago, law enforcement sources said. But the shooting victims also included 47-yearold Ulises Valladares, a bound kidnapping victim who was shot and killed by an FBI agent during a failed rescue attempt Monday.
The shooting in Spring late Wednesday also left two others injured — a Harris County sheriff ’s deputy and a bystander.
The incident began when Harris County deputies responded to a call in Spring to arrest a man suspected in a potentially violent domestic dispute earlier that day. Deputies tracked the man to his home and tried to arrest him. As deputies handcuffed the man, he pulled a handgun from his waistband and started firing, according to Deputy Thomas Gilliland, a sheriff ’s office spokesman.
Deputy wounded
The man — who had not been formally identified as of Thursday evening — shot one deputy in the forearm, narrowly missed striking another, and shot and wounded one of his roommates, Gilliland said. The Roommate did not have anything to do with the earlier incident, deputies said, and was taken by Life Flight helicopter to a hospital in critical condition.
After deputies pulled back, the gun-toting man holed up in the home — still handcuffed — and refused to come out, sparking a late-night SWAT standoff.
Deputies said the man may not have realized his wife was also inside the house, hiding on another level. Hostage negotiators showed up shortly before 11 p.m. and helped get the woman out safe just before midnight.
Meanwhile, the wounded deputy was rushed to Memorial Hermann The Woodlands. He has since been released from the hospital, Gilliland said.
Deputies shut down parts of Kuykendahl Road and dozens of officers, including SWAT, the Department of Public Safety and Precinct 4 deputy constables flooded the scene as the standoff continued into the night. Eventually, SWAT officers entered the home and searched the downstairs with the help of a robot. As they scoured the second floor around 12:30 a.m., officers found the suspect dead inside.
“I think he was still handcuffed,” Gilliland said.
Authorities did not immediately know whether the gunman had died in the shootout with deputies or killed himself. An autopsy is pending, Gilliland said.
“They will determine what gunshot wounds killed, whether it was self-inflicted or came from our deputies,” Gilliland said.
Investigators are trying to determine how the man was able to access a weapon after being handcuffed. Asked whether deputies should have searched the suspect before handcuffing him, Sheriff Gonzalez said, “Ideally you like to do a full systematic search, but sometimes that’s not possible.”
Rush hour suspect shot
David Cuevas, president of the Harris County Deputies Organization, said he was still waiting to hear more about the specifics of the shooting, but had visited the hospital late Wednesday to check on the injured deputy before his release. “We’re happy the deputy survived his injuries, and appreciate the fact we’ve been receiving a lot of public support,” he said.
The second officer-related shooting played out hours later in a far-different scene, a busy highway not far from the Galleria at the height of rush hour.
Authorities said a man robbed a gas station on South Post Oak, shooting at a store clerk and fleeing onto the West Loop, causing “multiple crashes” and snarling traffic on the freeway. When Bellaire police — the first on scene — approached the suspect, he got out of the car armed with a revolver and started walking away, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
Houston police tried to arrest the man, but he brandished his gun at officers, refused verbal commands and unsuccessfully tried to carjack people nearby, authorities said. That prompted a Houston police lieutenant — a 22-year department veteran — to shoot the man. He died in the parking lot of Boudreaux’s Cajun Kitchen, just off the West Loop’s feeder road.
Law enforcement sources said the man, who also had not been identified Thursday evening, was a 38-year-old with a lengthy criminal background, including a May arrest for allegedly threatening a north Houston man with a machete, then using the weapon while trying to assault two HPD officers who responded to the call.
Spate of shootings unusual
Joe Gamaldi, president of the Houston Police Officers, said the shootings underscored the need to make sure that violent criminals like the suspect in the West Loop incident remain locked up.
“He only got a $60,000 bond, so for $6,000, he’s able to walk the streets freely and terrorize our community like he did today,” Gamaldi said, arguing that Harris County judges and the district attorney’s office need to make sure violent felons receive harsher bonds.
District attorney’s office spokesman Dane Schiller pushed back on the criticism, pointing to the conviction earlier this week of a man who fired at HPD SWAT officers during a 2015 standoff and was sentenced Wednesday to 45 years in prison.
“This is the work our prosecutors do day in and day out to keep the public safe,” he said.
Amanda Woog, creator of the Texas Justice Initiative, a database of officer-involved shootings across Texas, said that the number of shootings in one metropolitan area in such a short span was unusual, but that law enforcement and criminal justice professionals needed to keep working to try to prevent them in the future.
“Unfortunately we’re going to keep seeing these shootings in Houston and around the country, and we need start looking forward at ways to prevent them,” she said, “and not focus all our attention backwards, finding ways to justify them or assign blame.”