Good Guy with a Gun #267: Houston, TX

Multiple masked invaders with rifles. She called 911. Police didn't make it in time. She didn't need them to. | Original incident: July 26, 2024

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.

A woman called 911 just after 11 PM to report several men outside her apartment, masked, carrying rifles, pounding on her door. Police didn’t arrive in time to keep the men from forcing their way in — not a critique, they can’t be everywhere at once — and the residents met them with gunfire of their own.

“No one inside the home was injured,” HPD’s Lt. T. Riley told reporters at the scene, “however, one of the suspects was struck multiple times in the head. He has been transported to a local hospital and is in critical condition.”

That suspect turned out to be Laron Pijeaux, 18. He was charged with burglary with intent to commit a felony two days later, still in the hospital and in no position to run anywhere. The rest of his crew wasn’t so easy to pin down. It took HPD a month of further digging to identify two more of them — Dontarious Millender, 19, and Noah Humphries, 19 — both charged in absentia. As of the last update on the case, neither had been caught, and at least three more men who broke down that door have never been identified at all.

There’s no sign anywhere in the record that the residents faced so much as a follow-up call from the DA’s office. Whoever she was, the woman who called 911 that night ended up on the right side of a gunfight against five armed men and didn’t even have to give her name to the papers. Call her a Good Gal with a Gun and leave it there.

Sources

Primary

HPD’s own release ties the case together, naming all three charged suspects, their courts, and the dates each was picked up. Update: Two Suspects Charged, Wanted in July Shooting at 10630 Beechnut Street (Houston Police Department)

Lt. T. Riley’s on-scene briefing to reporters.

News

ABC13 got the Riley quote first and ran a clean initial report. Home invasion suspect hospitalized after allegedly getting into gunfight with homeowners, HPD says (ABC13)

KHOU’s version stands as independent reporting, not just a rewrite of the release. Suspect shot in head multiple times during apparent home invasion in southwest Houston, police say (KHOU)

Fox 26 covered it twice — the shooting itself, then Pijeaux’s charge a few days later.

• Houston home invasion leaves suspect in critical condition: HPD (Initial report)

• Houston shooting: 18-year-old suspect shot during burglary at Beechnut Street Apartment (Pijeaux charged)

Click2Houston’s writeup covers basically the same ground as the HPD release, word for word in places. 2 men wanted in home invasion that led to shootout at southwest Houston apartment (Click2Houston/KPRC)