HOUSTON \u2013 A family tracking down the person accused of taking memorial items left for a 16-year-old shooting victim got some answers Tuesday and KPRC 2 News was there when they did.<\/p>\n
Houston Police said Jadiel Rodriguez was killed in a drive-by shooting two weeks ago in the Durham Park neighborhood. Another teen was injured in the same shooting. Police have identified a man known as \u201cJunior\u201d as a person of interest in the killing.<\/p>\n
Following a vigil for Rodriguez last week, family members noticed flowers, candles and a custom name plate had been taken from the memorial near Blackhawk Ridge and Sunny Terrace. On Thursday, KPRC 2 News first reported the missing items taken from the memorial. Loved ones said neighbors had seen a man removing the times.<\/p>\n
On Friday, family members say a neighbor spotted the same man allegedly taking more items from the memorial and took pictures, capturing his license plate number. The family rushed to the scene and confronted him. Their next call was to KPRC 2 News reporter Corley Peel, who spoke with the man directly.<\/p>\n
When asked where the items were, the man said he did not have them but promised to return them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them I\u2019ll do as fast as I can get the items. I\u2019ll provide them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When pressed further, the man grew impatient.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sooner I quit this conversation, the process will stop,\u201d he said before driving away, just before police arrived.<\/p>\n
A neighbor\u2019s quick thinking helped partially recover some of the missing items.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the neighbors, thanks to her, she was able to take pictures, and her brave husband was able to go into the trunk, take the stuff out of his trunk and give it to my sister-in-law, who amazingly was passing by during the moment of the exchange,\u201d said Victor Perdomo, Jadiel\u2019s uncle.<\/p>\n
Cell phone video captured by Perdomo shows the man reportedly describing his actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go and I pick up the trash,\u201d the man said on the recording.<\/p>\n
Perdomo says the family is devastated by the situation on top of their grief.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes us feel horrible, miserable. There\u2019s no word to describe it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Despite everything, Perdomo says the family is willing to forgive, they just want their items back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re willing to forgive him. But just give us the stuff back. It\u2019s our stuff,\u201d Perdomo said. \u201cThe message is, if it\u2019s not yours, don\u2019t touch it, leave it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
KPRC 2 News is not identifying the man because he has not been charged with a crime. Police went to his home but he was not there. The man told Corley he would contact the family and arrange to meet them to return the remaining items.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 A family tracking down the person accused of taking memorial items left for a 16-year-old shooting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,110111,37303,5502],"class_list":["post-306856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-jadiel-rodriguez","tag-memorial","tag-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}