Authorities have filed murder charges against a man accused of fatally shooting an 11-year-old boy who had been ringing doorbells with friends as part of a prank.
The suspect, Leon Gonzalo Jr., was arrested and booked at the Harris County Jail on Tuesday morning and charged with one count of murder, according to Harris County court records.
According to the Houston Police Department, the incident happened around 10:55 p.m. on August 30, at a home in the 9700 block of Mimbrough in southeast Houston. Police said a group of children were playing “ding-dong ditch,” a game where kids knock on doors and run away, when someone stepped outside and began firing at them as they scattered.
The victim and at least two of his friends had been going around their neighborhood banging on or kicking doors and running away. Sgt. Michael Cass with the Houston Police Department’s homicide division said that “officers were told the male was ringing doorbells of homes in the area and running away. A witness stated the male was running from a house, after ringing the doorbell, just prior to suffering a gunshot wound. A witness reported that a person came out of the home and started shooting at the kids as they ran down the street. Tragically, one of them—an 11-year-old boy—was hit in the back.”
Cass said the preliminary information indicates that the victims and his friends ran down the street after banging on the suspect’s door. The boy was rushed to a hospital but died from his injuries on Sunday afternoon, with the victim was identified on Tuesday as 11-year-old Julian Guzman; police said the boy lived about a block from the home.
The prank is similar to what’s being dubbed the “door-kicking challenge,” a TikTok trend based on an old prank called “ding dong ditch,” in which groups of kids record videos of themselves kicking and banging on doors of homes and apartments before running away and then posting the videos on social media.
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