HOUSTON \u2013 The concerns come as the case involving the shooting death of 17-year-old Mariah Alatorre returns to court. The man accused in her death, Enrique Aguilar, is due for a bond hearing tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u2018I wasn\u2019t receiving any more messages\u2019<\/p>\n
Alatorre went to a party with a friend. Her mother, Yady Alatorre, said she was keeping in touch with her daughter throughout the night.<\/p>\n
Then the messages stopped.<\/p>\n
Yady Alatorre said it was around 12:30 a.m. when she realized she was no longer hearing from her daughter.<\/p>\n
She later received a call from Mariah\u2019s close friend telling her the teenager had been shot.<\/p>\n
According to Mariah\u2019s mother, she learned that after leaving the party, Mariah had allegedly been shot by Aguilar, a partygoer who dropped the teenage girls off at an urgent care facility before leaving.<\/p>\n
Aguilar was arrested two months later. This the second time he is charged in a person\u2019s death, and Alatorre says she doesn\u2019t believe her daughter was aware.<\/p>\n
Young witnesses reluctant to talk<\/p>\n
Mariah\u2019s mother said she still has questions about what happened that night, including who was there and what led to the shooting.<\/p>\n
She said young witnesses have been reluctant to talk about what they saw, complicating the investigation.<\/p>\n
Houston Police Officers Union President Douglas Griffith said that can make cases involving large teen gatherings difficult to investigate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they make it away from that scene, they\u2019re not gonna go home and tell their parents they were there,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n
Social media can quickly grow a party<\/p>\n
Griffith said social media can turn what starts as a small gathering into a much larger crowd.<\/p>\n
He also said the presence of guns can make those gatherings even more dangerous.<\/p>\n
With Aguilar\u2019s bond hearing scheduled for tomorrow, Griffith said he believes the case highlights the need for consequences when violence happens at these gatherings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the courts need to set an example and say, hey, look, we can\u2019t tolerate this,\u201d Griffith said.<\/p>\n
What parents can watch for<\/p>\n
Mariah\u2019s mother said she had her daughter\u2019s location that night, but knowing where her daughter was did not prevent what happened.<\/p>\n
Griffith said prevention starts with parents knowing where their teens are \u2014 but also knowing who they are with.<\/p>\n
He said parents should pay attention to when gatherings grow too large or become difficult to control, and recognize when it may be time for their teens to leave.<\/p>\n
For Mariah\u2019s family, questions remain about what happened after she left that party and what led to the shooting that ended her life.<\/p>\n
Aguilar\u2019s bond hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 The concerns come as the case involving the shooting death of 17-year-old Mariah Alatorre returns to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[131771,151887,2441,56,151889,58,57,151891,151890,151892,120330,151888,6878],"class_list":["post-438347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-community-safety-concerns","tag-community-safety-teens","tag-court","tag-houston","tag-houston-crime-young-people","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-large-gatherings-safety","tag-parental-supervision-teens","tag-teen-gun-violence","tag-teen-takeover","tag-teen-violence-prevention","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438347","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=438347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}