Sarah Grunau/Houston Public Media
There was a deadly exchange of gunfire near the intersection of 6th Street and Avenue A in South Houston on March 27, 2026.
A man died and a police officer was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head Friday morning in South Houston, where there was an exchange of gunfire after what was described as a “low-speed chase.”
Officers with the South Houston Police Department attempted to make a traffic stop, initiating a vehicle pursuit that lasted about 10 minutes, Cpt. Jon Laird told Houston TV station KHOU. The driver pulled up to a home near the intersection of 6th Street and Avenue A, where Laird said the vehicle was registered, and two officers then approached.
“The officer on the passenger side noticed that the driver had a shotgun and yelled, ‘He’s got a shotgun,'” Laird told reporters at the scene. “Then the driver shot the officer in the head with a shotgun. And officers returned fire.”
Sign up for the Hello, Houston! daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.
Laird did not name either the officer who was shot or the accused shooter. He said the injured officer underwent surgery at a hospital and was in the intensive care unit, but in stable condition, while the driver of the vehicle officers pursued was pronounced dead at the scene.
Laird said the wounds sustained by the man who died were “possibly self-inflicted.”
“The officers returned fire with pistols,” Laird said. “His injuries, it looks like, were done with a 12-gauge shotgun.”
Joshua Martinez, a nearby resident, shared video footage with Houston Public Media that indicated a total of 10 gunshots were fired during the encounter.
The morning shootout was atypical for his neighborhood, Martinez said.
“You hear a little bit of gunshots here and there on Saturdays, Friday nights, because people get drunk and all that stuff,” he said. “But you don’t actually see anything serious like this.”
The same could be said for the South Houston Police Department, according to Laird, who said the small municipality near Houston has 32 officers on its force.
“We don’t have officer-involved shootings every day, but we have them from time to time,” Laird said. “Our officer getting shot in the head, that’s a big deal to us.”
Houston Public Media’s Sarah Grunau contributed to this report.