Tragedy Strikes as Citizen is Killed During Houston, Texas Police Chase

To say a police officer has a tough job is a massive understatement. In a nutshell, their job is track down the bad guys and bring them to jail. Sometimes, these officers have to chase the bad guys before they can capture them. One such police chase, however, resulted in the tragic death of an innocent bystander in Houston.

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A 41 year-old Hispanic woman had just finished her grocery shopping. Everything was loaded up and she was doing like a lot of us do, checking her phone before heading back out on the road. This particular moment lead to a very unexpected event.

A group of teenagers approached her with one member of the group pointing a gun at her thigh. She didn't know what they were saying to her because she doesn't understand English. The woman gave the teenagers her phone and wallet. It seemed they wanted more because, as she described it, they tugged at her truck keys. She got out of the truck and they took off in her vehicle.

Houston police were able to track the woman's truck through it's GPS and gave chase with the five suspects inside the truck. The truck was chased for several blocks before being stopped at an apartment complex.

During this chase is when the tragedy took place. Two officers in one police vehicle that were coming to assist in the chase lost control of their vehicle onto the sidewalk and into a business parking lot. It was here that the officers struck a pedestrian.

The officers ended their pursuit and ran to the victim to perform CPR but the pedestrian was already deceased. The two officers have been on the force for less than two years. The pedestrian was only identified as a Black man in his 60's.

As for the car jacking and robbery suspects, three of the five suspects were arrested at the apartment complex where the chase ended. The two officers involved in the accident are on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation by the Houston Police and the District Attorney's Office.

The police have an extremely hard job that requires decisions that can only be made in a split second. It's easy to "armchair quarterback" a decision made in a fast moving moment like this. I'm sure the investigative team will ask why the officers were driving at such a high rate of speed, what caused them to lose control of the vehicle and any other pertinent questions to find out what happened and hand out the proper punishments. If any new developments come to us of this story, we will pass them along to you.