HOUSTON \u2013 Houston police have charged 18-year-old Jefferson Velasquez with murder in a Midtown shooting, and he was already in the Harris County Jail facing a separate murder charge from a house party in East Harris County.<\/p>\n
Records show both deadly shootings happened under similar circumstances involving large gatherings, and according to records, Velasquez has a pattern of allegedly robbing people of their chains at large parties.<\/p>\n
Velasquez is scheduled to appear in court Thursday morning on the new murder charge.<\/p>\n
The first killing: A teen shot at a crowded house party<\/p>\n
The first shooting happened Aug. 30, 2025, at a party of about 200 people on Waldine Street in East Harris County, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.<\/p>\n
Deputies say 17-year-old Angel Garcia was murdered after Velasquez and others approached him \u2014 investigators described it as a possibly targeted act. Many of the witnesses were underage and left before deputies could interview them, which stretched the investigation out over several months.<\/p>\n
The Harris County Sheriff\u2019s Office arrested Velasquez in June for Garcia\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
The second killing: A fight spills outside a Midtown nightclub<\/p>\n
While Velasquez was free, he is also accused of fatally shooting 27-year-old Noah Ramirez.<\/p>\n
That shooting happened in late April outside the Diosa Nightclub in Midtown, where Houston police say a fight inside led to the shooting. Two other people were also hurt.<\/p>\n
Ramirez\u2019s father spoke with KPRC 2 News by phone. He said his son was not a troublemaker and had goals for his life, including going back to college, getting married, and having children.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want justice for him,\u201d Jesus Ramirez said. \u201cI just don\u2019t understand why they did what they did. It\u2019s just painful and something I\u2019ll never know or understand, I just want the person responsible to pay for what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s in Velasquez\u2019s record<\/p>\n
Velasquez is in jail with bonds totaling $800,000. In addition to the two murder charges, he is also facing unrelated aggravated robbery charges connected to the alleged chain robberies.<\/p>\n
Records show Velasquez is from El Salvador and has an immigration hold from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n
His defense attorney Keaton Forcht has not commented on the new murder case.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement is asking anyone who has been robbed or assaulted by Velasquez to come forward or call Crime Stoppers.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Houston police have charged 18-year-old Jefferson Velasquez with murder in a Midtown shooting, and he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[294,56,58,57,137868,636],"class_list":["post-391264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-crime","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-jefferson-velasquez","tag-murder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391264","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=391264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}