A man has been charged in the deadly shooting of a boy who was struck in the back by gunfire while playing “ding dong ditch” Saturday night in Houston, Texas, authorities said.
Gonzalo Leon Jr., 42, is charged with murder and currently jailed in Harris County, which includes the east Houston neighborhood where the shooting took place, according to the Houston Police Department. Police said a SWAT team took Leon into custody on Tuesday.
In addition to confirming Leon’s arrest, Houston police identified the boy in a news release as 11-year-old Julian Guzman.
Earlier, police had said the boy suffered a gunshot wound late Saturday while carrying out a “ding dong ditch” prank, where a prankster rings the doorbell of a home and runs away before anyone comes to answer it, with a group of friends.
Witnesses said the boy rang a doorbell and was running from the house when he was shot, according to a police statement. Sgt. Michael Cass, a Houston homicide detective, told CBS News affiliate KHOU that a witness had recalled someone exiting the house that was pranked and “shooting at the kids running down the street.” The boy was shot in the back, Cass said.
Guzman was wounded when police arrived at the scene and taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead on Sunday, police said.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, a man was detained at the home where it occurred and questioned by Houston homicide detectives, but he was ultimately released, according to the police department and KHOU. Investigators seized several rifles and handguns while executing a search warrant at the man’s home, KHOU reported.
Authorities have not explicitly named Leon the individual detained initially for questioning.
This was not the first time in recent years that a “ding dong ditch” prank turned deadly. In 2023, a California man was found guilty of murder for intentionally ramming the car of three teen boys who rang his doorbell as a prank, killing all of them, The Associated Press reported. More recently, in May, a man was charged with second-degree murder in Virginia after he shot and killed a teenager who had filmed a TikTok video of himself playing the doorbell prank on the man’s home, according to The New York Times.
Although Texas allows people to use deadly force in situations where they believe doing so is necessary for their own protection, Cass told KHOU that the circumstances around this case did not appear consistent with “any type of self-defense” claim.
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