TOLL OF GUN VIOLENCE GRIPS COMMUNITIES
As Texas reels from shooting, firearms take lives of 19 kids in Houston
They died after being shot in the chest and head. They died on the streets of Houston and in homes. Sometimes, they died feet away from their loved ones. They all died before the age of 18. Through May of this year, 19 young people — 15 of them Hispanic or Black — died in Harris County as a result of various forms of gun violence, excluding suicides, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Nineteen children also died in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde last month, a number that shocked the country. Most children who die in shootings, however, are not killed in mass casualty incidents.
The county toll is on track to surpass the count from last year, when 37 young people were shot to death in homicides
and accidental shootings, up from 29 victims in 2020, 30 in 2019 and 27 the year before. The institute did not have data available for prior years.
As Texas and the nation reel from the latest mass shootings, including Uvalde, the deaths of children and teenagers in the Houston area offer a clear reminder that young people are affected by gun violence every day.
Harris County has lost 142 children to gun violence since the beginning of 2018, according to the medical examiner data. They wanted to go to college and join the military. One girl wanted to become a veterinarian, or maybe a doctor, and another wanted to be a social worker. They hoped to buy homes and raise families.
Diamond Alvarez, 16, wanted to go to cosmetology school after graduating from Madison High School. A 17-yearold boy she had been dating shot her to death Jan. 11, after she had found out he
was in a relationship with someone else, police said.
“She was taken from us,” her sister Ashley Machado said shortly after the shooting.
National problem
Nationally, gun deaths have been increasing for years across all age groups, said Kelly Drane, research director at Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. From 2014 to 2020, the number of children killed in gun homicides nearly doubled across the country, Drane said, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An analysis of the agency’s data published two months ago said gun violence had surpassed car wrecks as the leading cause of death for American children.
“Gun violence is affecting children every single day,” Drane said. “Our children don’t have to live this way and there are things we can do to improve this crisis.”
Until then, families mourn as neighbors, classmates and community members grapple with the lasting impacts.
For a while, Christina Partida wanted to move from the northwest Houston apartment she, her husband and kids called home after Hurricane Harvey destroyed their house. The violence — people mugged, cars stolen, homes burglarized — around the neighborhood where her husband had grown up was “eye-opening,” she said.
The family planned to move in the spring to another part of the city, hoping for a fresh start. Her 17-year-old Dominic, a kid who hated drama and fighting, did not want to move.
He kept spending time at the apartment but was supposed to leave it for good in late March. Instead, two individuals Dominic had once called friends shot him dead in the early hours of March 20.
“Why? I don’t know,” Partida said recently. “My son had goals and ambitions.”
Less than a half hour before Dominic was pronounced dead, another 17-year-old was fatally shot some 15 miles across the city.
Robert Butler had just shown up at a birthday party and finished posing for photos with friends when several people started shooting, said his mother, Desiree Stewart. Stewart said her son pushed a girl away from the gunfire, saving her life but taking a bullet to the chest.
Robert always had been a protector and often took his 6-yearold sister Melanie on weekend outings, his mother said. The youngster has been too scared to sleep alone since her brother’s death.
Stewart did not send Melanie to school after the Uvalde shooting — both mother and daughter were too afraid.
Stewart took her girls to the cemetery this week to be with their older brother. They touched and kissed his gravestone. The teen’s uncle and grandfather died in shootings, too.
“It don’t feel the same without him,” Stewart said. “I’m used to him here or calling, calling me all day. Now, I just have memories.”
Impact on children
Sometimes a social media post flashing across the screens of phones nearly every kid now carries can start a conflict that escalates and eventually erupts into violence, Houston ISD Police Chief Pedro Lopez said.
For instance, he said, a recent shooting at Heights High, in which the shot student survived, had been brewing online.
“It’s a constant battle on social media that sometimes eventually ends up in some type of physical violence either by firearm or fight,” said Lopez, a former Houston police assistant chief. “That’s why I urge parents to monitor their kids’ social media accounts.”
Social media, of course, does not explain all the gun violence ending young people’s lives.
This year’s victims have been killed in robberies, accidental shootings and domestic disputes.
Ryan Jaziel Gomez Lupian was too young to be in school yet when he found a relative’s gun. The 4-year-old walked into a room where his two brothers were playing video games, said his mother, Rubi Lupian, who was in another room.
One of his brothers, 9, tried to take the gun away and the weapon fired during the struggle.
Ryan, who was shot in the head, died May 5.
The boy loved playing soccer and basketball with his brothers and cousins. He also loved playing with his pet Husky. His brothers did not return to school as they mourned, Lupian said.
“They didn’t want to go back,” she said. “They just wanted to be home with photos of him.”
For children, any exposure to such violence can reverberate for the rest of their lives.
Drane, the Giffords researcher, said some studies show the impact can present mental and physical health concerns immediately as well as in adulthood, ranging from not playing at a park down the street to lifelong trauma.
“The impact on children living with our nation’s gun violence crisis is just enormous,” Drane said, “and in some ways immeasurable.”
One night in late April, Lauren Juma, a 16-year-old who attended Nimitz High School, called her mom, Laurie Young. The woman’s ex-boyfriend was “acting delusional,” she told her.
Those were among the last words exchanged between the mother and daughter who spent virtually all of their time together except for school and work hours. It still is not clear what happened before Van Brisbon, 60, allegedly shot Lauren; Brisbon is charged with murder.
“I’m not sure what the situation was,” Young said. “It’s very hard because I have to adjust to not having my baby with me and I don’t know why it happened, but it happened. I’m just taking it a day at a time.”
Edwin Gomez echoed the feeling. The 39-year-old immigrant from El Salvador moved his family from Houston to a neighborhood in Katy that seemed safer. Earlier this year, Gomez said he became concerned about road rage shootings that seemed to regularly fill the news. He worried his family could be next.
His worst fears materialized in early March when his 16-yearold son, Bairon, was shot in the head by a 13-year-old during a confrontation in a shopping center parking lot.
Gomez is left with the memories of family vacations in Florida and Colorado, Friday night dinner outings and Sunday morning breakfasts together. He also is left with a grieving 18year-old son whose brother died in his arms.
“I don’t know how to get better, to tell you the truth,” Gomez said. “It’s not fair for hardworking people like us that these criminals come out of nowhere and kill our kids.”