Murder suspect found dead after standoff
A murder suspect at the center of a standoff Thursday with Harris County sheriff's deputies was found dead in a Cypress-area home with a self-inflicted wound, according to authorities.
Christopher Michael Julian, 27, was accused of gunning down a 29-year-old father inside a Magnolia home late Wednesday night. Deputies had been searching for the man Thursday at a home in the 15200 block of Vincennes Oak in the Cypress area, where an unidentified person fire multiple gunshots at deputies.
Deputies did not return fire and were not injured, a department spokesman said. It's unclear who pulled the trigger. Deputies say Julian was the only person in the home when they found his body.
Julian was last seen at 11 p.m. Wednesday leaving the house in the 33000 block of Kinley Ann Court in Magnolia after he allegedly pulled a pistol and shot Samuel Schmitt an estimated six times in front of Schmitt’s 13-year-old daughter and girlfriend, Montgomery County sheriff’s Lt. Scott Spencer said.
Investigators had information leading them to think Julian was still in the area, Spencer added.
“His mental capacity — he seems to be completely incoherent, paranoia, manic,” Spencer said during a Thursday afternoon press conference at the sheriff ’s office in Conroe. “People that know him the best, that have had encounters with him in the last 24 hours, they’ve said that it seems his mental status may be deteriorating.”
The accused shooter had spent more than an hour inside the home talking with Schmitt and others before he retrieved a pistol from his car and opened fire, Spencer said.
Witnesses inside the home told detectives Julian was often “incoherent” during the conversation. What led to the gunfire remains under investigation.
Those in Schmitt’s family are “extremely distraught, shook up,” Spencer said.
Spencer described the two as friends who have known each other for nearly a decade going back to high school and said Julian would visit Schmitt at his home every few weeks.
Prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for murder with no bond on Julian.
He is also accused of shooting at his girlfriend in Tomball earlier
Wednesday, although it is unclear if the two incidents are related.
At the press briefing, Tomball police Lt. Brandon Patin said Julian was driving in his vehicle as he fired two to three shots at his girlfriend a block away from the doorsteps of Tomball City Hall.
When the police arrived, they conducted a three-and-a-half hour search for Julian by pinging his cellphone.
He was being charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for that incident, Patin said.
Julian drove away from the Magnolia home in a 2012 silver Nissan Versa with Texas license plate MPT5747, the same vehicle he was seen in at the Tomball shooting.