Two young children and their mother were found dead inside a hotel room Friday in southwest Houston, according to Houston Police. Police say it appears the approximately 40-year-old woman shot her two young children and then killed herself.
The shooting took place at the Residence Inn by Marriott Houston Medical Center/NRG Park. That’s on Kirby Drive at Main Street, less than a mile north of NRG Stadium.
Hotel staff told police the family checked into the room on Wednesday, but staff had not heard from them. Staff entered the room and discovered the bodies.
Police said Friday afternoon that homicide investigators are still looking at everything, but the woman appears to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot after killing her two children, a nine-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.
Friday’s shooting makes Houston again the scene of an apparent murder-suicide where a parent killed their children—often called filicide or familicide. These cases are rare, but this is now Houston’s second in 60 days. On May 4, Houston restaurateur Matthew Mitchell killed his wife, Thy Mitchell, and their two children before killing himself.
Just two days after Houston’s murder-suicide in May, the Journal of Interpersonal Violence published a study that looked at 3,974 filicide incidents over a 25-year period from 1999 to 2023. It found that:
It should be noted that the study did not focus exclusively on homicide-suicide cases.
Texas joined in 2019 but this is the first year it will provide violent death data to the CDC from all 254 counties. Harris County was the first to join, and Texas then focused on 21 of its largest counties before expanding to all 254 counties.