Texas shooting leaves 1 critical
Apparent mistake leads to tragedy
Two Texas cheerleaders were shot, and one of them critically injured, early Tuesday after they mistakenly got into the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot, one of the girls said.
The Elgin, Texas, shooting is the third headline-making incident in less than a week in which someone was shot while approaching a person they apparently did not know.
Police responded to reports of gunshots outside an H-E-B supermarket after midnight, authorities said in a news release. They arrested and charged Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, in what they called “an altercation . . . in the parking lot of HEB” in which “multiple shots were fired into a vehicle.”
One of the victims was identified by her coach as Payton Washington, an 18-year-old high school senior and cheerleader for the Round Rock Independent School District, near Austin. Washington “sustained serious injuries” when she was shot in the back and a leg, police said. She was transported to a hospital by helicopter and is in critical condition, they said.
The other cheerleader struck by gunfire, Heather Roth, suffered a graze wound on one of her legs and was released from the scene of the shooting, authorities said.
At a Tuesday night vigil shared to Instagram Live, Roth said she and three other cheerleaders with Woodlands Elite Cheer Co. had just completed their Monday night practice when they arrived at the H-E-B parking lot, which their carpool used. When Roth got into a car she thought was a friend’s, she realized that a man was in the passenger seat and quickly got out, she said. After Roth got into her friend’s car, she said, she saw Rodriguez approach and rolled down her window to apologize.
But what unfolded would echo what happened last week to Ralph Yarl in Kansas City, Mo., and Kaylin Gillis in upstate New York.
“He pulled out a gun, and then he just started shooting at all of us,” Roth said, according to KHOU, an CBS affiliate in Houston. She added, “Payton opens the door, and she starts throwing up blood.”
Two other cheerleaders were not injured.
Additional or enhanced charges against Rodriguez are likely, police said.
The incident comes as the shootings of Yarl and Gillis have become a flash point in the national debate on gun violence and self-defense.
An 84-year-old white man is in custody after opening fire on Yarl, a Black 16-year-old who rang the man’s doorbell after going to the wrong home to pick up his siblings. Andrew D. Lester, charged with felony assault and armed criminal action, told police that “it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was ‘scared to death’ ” because of the teenager’s size and his own age and inability to defend himself, according to the criminal complaint. Yarl is recuperating.
Gillis, 20, was fatally shot after she and her friends accidentally pulled into the wrong driveway in Hebron, N.Y., while looking for a friend’s house. Kevin Monahan, the 65-year-old homeowner, has been charged with second-degree murder.