Weekend slayings grimly open domestic violence month
Investigators with the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office on Monday were still working to piece together what led to multiple people opening fire when a man and woman met Sunday, along with several members of their family, during an ongoing breakup, officials said.
Devin Keith Grantom, 28, has been charged with murder in connection with the fatal shooting of his wife, Courtney Grantom, 28, according to Harris County court records. But the man’s mother, Deborah Grantom, 64, was also killed in the shooting and two other men were severely injured Sunday in northwest Harris County, said Senior Deputy Thomas Gilliland, a spokesman for the sheriff ’s office.
It remained unclear whether anyone else might be charged in connection with the shooting.
The chaotic event was the second of two fatal shootings in the county this weekend that investigators suspect are the result of domestic violence, Gilliland said. And the weekend, which was the start of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, is the second straight in which deputies have responded to a domestic violence-related homicide.
Despite the recent spate, domestic violence killings had been trending down in Harris County this year after reaching a high in 2022, according to the latest county data. Gilliland provided numbers showing deputies had responded to 16 homicides this year in which they suspect domestic violence is at play, compared to 26 through all of 2022.
“The numbers are still trending down,” said Amy Smith, senior director of operations and communications with the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Council. “But if you take into consideration how high they were last year, that doesn’t mean they’re actually down. They’re just less than last year.”
Between 2019 and 2022, the number of domestic violencerelated homicides to which investigators responded doubled, according to a report from the University of Houston. In 2019, investigators with the Houston Police Department and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office investigated 32 homicides in which they suspected domestic violence played a role. By 2022, that number had increased to 64.
The number of domestic violence-related homicides is the lowest since the office investigated 10 in 2019, according to the university’s report. But the school’s paper specifically looked at intimate partner violence homicides, separate from domestic violence homicides, which include anyone who might live in a household together.
But as a percentage of total homicides, data from the Houston Police Department bear out Smith’s comments. Of the 275 murders as of October, around 50 have been connected to domestic violence, officials said. In 2022 through the same time period, there were 332 homicides, of which around 60 of them were connected to domestic violence. Both are around 18 percent of all homicides.
Elizabeth Gregory, a professor at the University of Houston and one of the authors of the study, said she wished departments were required to report data about intimate partner violence and domestic violence to the FBI, and that officers were able to differentiate between the two from the scene to give a fuller portrait of what conditions look like in Harris County.
Sunday’s shooting happened around 10 a.m. in the 8700 block of Cypressbrook Drive. Both Courtney and Deborah Grantom were killed and two men were critically injured. Gilliland said on Monday that he hadn’t received any updated information on the men’s conditions.
The shooting took place mostly within the residence, according to investigators. And detectives suspect there may have been a gunbattle involving several people, Gilliland said.
The two men who were critically injured were believed to have approached the scene in an effort to de-escalate the situation, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. They also were believed to have been armed and to have fired shots during the violence. One of the men was married to the 64-year-old woman who was killed, officials said.
Smith told the Chronicle that bringing guns to a tense domestic situation can often exacerbate it. Experts have said the ease of firearm access is one of several factors behind the uptick in Harris County in recent years.
Gregory added that firearms aren’t just used in fatal exchanges but also to terrorize women in abusive relationships.
“It’s important to note that guns are not just instruments of homicide — they are also regularly used to terrorize women and sometimes children in their homes, per our interviews with people in shelters who reported having guns held to their heads sometimes multiple times a day,” she said.
Instead, if someone sees domestic violence, they should first call 911, Smith said. A person’s next actions depend on the situation, she said. If the argument is between two people you know, you can use that to try to diffuse the situation. If you don’t know the people and weapons are involved, any intervention could make things worse, she said.