{"id":452363,"date":"2026-09-30T18:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/452363\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T18:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:50:15","slug":"houston-crime-father-of-murder-4-year-old-at-center-of-child-custody-says-family-is-devastated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/452363\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston crime: Father of murder 4-year-old at center of child custody says family is devastated"},"content":{"rendered":"

The father of a 4-year-old girl who police said was murdered by her own mother says the family is devastated, according to a statement.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 5:23PM<\/p>\n

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The father of a 4-year-old girl who police said was murdered by her own mother<\/a> did everything the law asks of a parent to protect their child, according to a statement from his attorney’s office.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the family’s attorney shared photos of 4-year-old Vivian Savella, along with a statement that her dad trusted the courts, followed every order, and waited for the process to work.<\/p>\n

The Houston Police Department said Vivian was found shot to death in west Houston on Tuesday night, and her mother allegedly turned the gun on herself but survived.<\/p>\n

Sources close to the family told ABC13 that a family court judge had just granted custody of Vivian to her father, and she was supposed to be turned over to him Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

ABC13’s Sarah Al-Shaikh will be following this story throughout the day. Tune in to the later editions of Eyewitness News, starting at 3 p.m. <\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The father of a 4-year-old girl who police said was murdered by her own mother says the family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[155486,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-452363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-155486","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452363","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=452363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}