Chris Cevilla, father of slain 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes, speaks during a news conference on Monday. (Nicole Hensley/Houston Chronicle, via AP)
The gunman pulled up alongside the car early Sunday morning.
A mother was driving four of her daughters to a convenience store for juice. The man opened fire, striking and fatally wounding 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes in the car, injuring her mother, LaPorsha Washington, and sending glass raining down on the other children in the car.
The horrific killing in Houston, on the second-to-last day of the year, has drawn wide attention. It has been denounced by Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. And this week it gained traction after being the focus of writer and activist Shaun King and civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt, who say they’ve raised $60,000 in a private fundraising effort for any information leading to the suspect’s arrest.
Authorities have described the suspect as a bearded white man in his 40s.
They have released a photo of the red pickup truck they believe he was driving. And they said a sketch of the suspect, made with assistance from Jazmine’s sisters, should be released on Thursday.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Gonzalez said that his office was poring through the tips that had flooded into his office after the killing but said that they did not have any definitive idea of who the shooter was or why he would have targeted the family.
“We still don’t have any linkage to this family,” he said. “So it still seems random.”
Merritt, who is working with Jazmine’s family, said they believe the shooting was racially motivated.
“That’s why I was brought on,” he said in a phone interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday. “We want to emphasize the racial nature of the attack and that hate-crime charges are appropriate.”
Local activists in Houston have pressed the sheriff’s office for answers on the case, and have also publicly questioned whether it was racially motivated. A rally is planned for Saturday.
“We’re not going to ignore that issue,” Gonzalez said. “Our focus continues to be on the evidence we have and leads we develop, and then the motive we can enhance and determine once we get those facts.”
Merritt and King have been soliciting tips from the public, which they’ve been forwarding over to the police. Merritt acknowledged that many of the tips they’d received were not likely to pan out, but said he had heard from an eyewitness whom he believed to be credible who gave him some details about the truck.
Merritt said Washington and two of her daughters who were injured by broken glass had been taken to the hospital after the shooting. Washington was shot in the arm, officials said.
[Police in East Pittsburgh fatally shoot 17-year-old Antwon Rose as he flees traffic stop]
Washington described the harrowing shooting to KTRK, Houston’s ABC TV affiliate.
“As I turned around and looked back at the street, I heard shots start firing and they came through my window, broke my glass, and hit me in my arm. They sped off in front of us and the truck slowed down and continued to fire as he was in front of us,” she said. “It was not fair. He intentionally killed my child for no reason. He didn’t even know her, he didn’t know who she was.”
She said one of her other daughters had been the first to see Jazmine had been wounded.
“She said, ‘Momma, Jazmine’s not moving. She’s not talking.’ I turned around and my 7-year-old was shot in the head,” Washington said. “My baby comes and asks me, ‘Where’s my sister? Is she coming back?’ She’s only six years old.”
Merritt said frustration was building about the case.
“We believe [the police] are out there diligently searching for information,” Merritt said. “As the days go on, it’s becoming more exacerbating. But that’s not a direct criticism of law enforcement, it’s just where we are in the case. We’re not at a happy place in the case.”
Another fundraising effort is afoot to help Jazmine’s family pay for her funeral and other expenses associated with her death. Set up by her father, Chris Cevilla, it raised more than $29,000 as of Wednesday night.
Gonzalez called Jazmine a “wonderful young angel with a full life ahead of her.”
“And it’s our understanding that she wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “That’s been stripped away. We take that very personally.”
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