Man gets life in prison for deadly Midtown shooting
Anguished screams erupted in a Harris County courtroom Friday as a judge sentenced a man to life in prison for a 2021 shooting outside a Midtown night club that left his mother dead and three deputies wounded.
Relatives of Joseph Gonzalez sobbed and punched walls while leaving the 209th District Court. A woman cried out, “You have a son to go home to — he needs you,” as Gonzalez’s wife wailed in the hallway. The couple have a young son.
Assistant District Attorney Chandler Raine asked for the 27year-old defendant to receive a life sentence on three counts of aggravated assault of a public servant, and Judge Brian Warren obliged during a hearing to decide his fate. A murder charge stemming from the death of Gonzalez’s mother, Lorri Gonzalez, 41, who was likely struck by the ensuing police gunfire, was dismissed as part of a plea agreement last October.
A lawyer for Gonzalez acknowledged the family’s thundering outcry in the courtroom.
“I can understand why — their mom, the matriarch, was killed by police,” said Jed Silverman, who helped defend Gonzalez. “They lost a mom and now they lost a brother, a son.”
Gonzalez, who testified, expressed regret for his role in his mother’s death as he read a statement from a notebook.
“I hate myself for what I did, for shooting the officers and causing them to shoot back,” he said. “I blame myself every day for what happened to my mom. I feel like it was my fault.”
Another lawyer, Matt Sharp, acknowledged in his closing arguments that a prison sentence was inevitable but asked the judge to consider Gonzalez’s family, including a son who may go years without seeing him behind bars. The plea agreement allowed the prosecutors to seek the full punishment but for the judge to ultimately decide the extent of the punishment after a pre-sentence investigation hearing.
“His mother was killed from his own actions and stupidity,” Sharp said. “What he did caused the death of his own mother — he’s going to have to live with that for the rest of his life.”
The shooting unfolded Jan. 3, 2021, as the defendant’s 25th birthday celebration at Set nightclub at 2900 Travis St. came to an end. A fight broke out as the club closed and patrons left. His father fell to the ground with a head injury, which prompted deputies working an extra job to rush over and help him.
Gonzalez, meanwhile, left the parking lot but returned with a gun — opening fire and striking deputies Korean Davenport, Javier Rojas and Troy Vaughn, all Harris County Sheriff’s Office employees working an off-duty security gig. Each of the deputies testified their side of what happened.
Rojas heard gunfire while on the phone with EMS and was struck in the leg. He sought cover, not knowing that his colleagues had also been shot, he said. He returned fire on the shooter, the only law enforcement official to do so, striking Gonzalez and another — the defendant’s mother.
An investigator testified that rounds from Gonzalez’s weapon did not hit the mother.
A gunshot wound to the stomach knocked Davenport to the ground. She crawled under a truck, unable to grab her duty weapon or tourniquet. The shooting left her hospitalized for nearly a month and unable to work for two years. Doctors had to remove a portion of her intestine and her wound later became infected, she testified.
A third deputy, Sgt. Troy Vaughn, had worked weekends at the club for more than a year and knew the staff and many of the patrons. Some of those customers took off their belts and shirts to use as a tourniquet on Vaughn’s legs.
“I kept telling myself, ‘I can’t die,’” Vaughn said.
He returned to work about seven months later.
“I still have lead in my body,” he continued.
Gonzalez ditched his gun in a pond across from the club on Travis and left. A security guard at a nearby apartment complex later found the weapon in the water.
The defendant, meanwhile, went to a hospital in Sugar Land to seek medical treatment.
Court records show Gonzalez was imprisoned until 2018 on two prior felonies out of Galveston County — burglary of a habitation and attempted indecency with a child.