Police have begun a manhunt for the gunman responsible for shooting and killing 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes in an apparently unprovoked attack on a black family.
According to KTRK, the family was exiting a Houston Walmart parking lot in a car driven by Barnes’ mother, LaPorsha Washington, 30, when a suspect pulled up beside them in a red pickup truck and opened fire on their vehicle. Jazmine was fatally shot and Washington was also wounded. “Three teenage girls, said to have been family members, were also in the car…but survived the attack,” KTRK writes.
While the suspect’s motive hasn’t been clearly established by police, the racial dynamics at play and the recent uptick of white supremacist violence make the circumstances of the shooting deeply unsettling. A mother and her family doing some shopping only to be viciously gunned down, and a child’s life taken—horrific doesn’t even begin to do it justice.
From KTRK:
The suspect is described as a white male in his 40s with a beard…No information was available on a license plate, or make and model of the truck.
“Someone who does something like that will eventually talk about it, and we need anyone with information to come forward,” said HCSO Major Jesse Razo. “I urge whoever did this, turn yourself in, because we will find you.”