A Houston, TX, grand jury has elected not to charge a man who shot and killed a career criminal who tried to hold up a Houston taqueria in January 2023.
On January 5, 2023, 30-year-old Eric Eugene Washington entered El Ranchito taqueria in southwest Houston, brandishing what turned out to be a toy pistol and demanding the customers give him their money. As Washington went to leave the shop, one of the customers shot him nine times. If you are squeamish, don’t watch this video.
The customer then left the restaurant. Four days later, the 46-year-old shooter, who remains anonymous, contacted Houston homicide detectives via his attorney. At the time, I had two major concerns. First and foremost, the district attorney for Harris County and Houston is George Soros-funded Kim Ogg. Ogg runs an office that coddles criminals; killing a protected, even if not endangered, species seemed guaranteed to unleash a s**tstorm.
I’m not particularly sensitive about criminals when they hit their FAFO moment. I don’t have a problem shooting a man’s weight in lead at him to bring him down. In this case, I thought a solid, indestructible self-defense case was available for the first four rounds. The next four were decidedly in the “gray area” of legality. The ninth round, in my opinion, could, in the right lighting, be mistaken for an execution.
The video led to “community activists” calling the shooter a vigilante and demanding his arrest.
“You do not go and shoot someone over and over when they are no longer a threat,” said Candace Matthews of the New Black Panther Nation. “He was actually in the clear for a justified kill by shooting him like he did the first time when he was no longer a threat.”
Naturally, the media picked up the accusation.
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After the shooter turned himself in, the district attorney’s office made the decision to send the case to a grand jury rather than making the charge/dismiss decision itself.
After consulting with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, it was determined the shooting will be referred to a grand jury, Since the male is not arrested or charged, his identity is not being released
Wednesday, the grand jury “no billed” the shooter. This is how Ogg’s office explained the affair.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office mandates that all homicides be reviewed by a grand jury to allow members of the community to determine the appropriate outcome. This process ensures that all such cases are subject to community review at the grand jury and, if necessary, trial level.
Harris County grand juries are composed of 12 randomly selected residents who meet regularly for a period of three months to review all criminal charges to decide whether there is enough evidence for a case to proceed. If nine or more grand jurors agree that probable cause exists, they issue a “true bill,” or indictment, and the case continues on through the criminal justice system. If nine or more grand jurors determine probable cause does not exist, they may issue a “no bill,” effectively clearing the individual of criminal wrongdoing. The final decision as to whether to indict rests with grand jurors, not with prosecutors.
This process ensures that members of the community, rather than the District Attorney’s Office, determine the appropriate outcome in all homicides in Harris County.
It will be interesting to see if this policy of sending all homicides to a grand jury will survive this case, as it goes against so much of what Ogg stands for. You have a literal “good guy with a gun.” You have a racial minority criminal. The criminal had a fake gun. The number of shots and the firing sequence were in the red zone of the “permissible shooting”-meter. Rather than indict, you get the feeling that the grand jury would have carried the shooter down to the bar and bought him drinks all night.
