Texas 6-Year-Old Girl Allegedly Kills 1-Year-Old Brother; Father Charged

A 6-year-old girl allegedly killed her infant brother six months ago and the children’s father was charged this week.

Adrian Dreshaun Middleton was charged Nov. 19 for a May 2018 incident when he left the girl in the car with his 1-year-old son, according to court documents obtained by ABC13. He told officials that the car and air conditioner were running. Also, he gave the children snacks and turned on a movie inside the vehicle.

Later, the girl told police she was playing with the boy and said he began crying when she stopped playing with him. She got angry and wrapped the seat belt around him, the ABC affiliate report stated. The girl told police she thought he had fallen asleep.

When Middleton returned, he saw his daughter crying and noticed the belt wrapped around the 1-year-old’s neck and found he wasn’t responding. The girl told him she had done something bad.

He gave the boy CPR until an ambulance arrived, the report said.  The boy was rushed to Texas Children’s Hospital and was later pronounced dead.

Middleton initially told deputies that the children were strapped into car seats, KHOU reported. However, he later told officials there were no car seats in the vehicle.

Surveillance footage showed he was in the store for 1 hour and 40 minutes, the report said. He had claimed to officials that he was in the store for 30 to 45 minutes, ABC13 reported

Officials described the child’s death as homicide due to strangulation. He was identified in court documents as Adrian Middleton, Jr. The 6-year-old has not been identified.

Middleton, 26, was charged with abandoning a child. Other details about the case, including his next court date, are not clear.

Murder Rate Drops

In 2017, according to officials, the murder rate in Houston dropped 11 percent. It dropped from 302 homicides in 2016 to 269 in 2017, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“The way you reduce murders is to solve attempted murders,” Houston Police Department Chief Art Acevedo said in January 2018. “If you think about people who shoot people, frequently it’s not the first person they’ve ever shot, and in many cases it won’t be the last person they will shoot.”

In 2011 Houston saw its fewest number of homicides in recent memory, with 198. There’s been a steady uptick since then—until 2017. However, violent crime has been on the rise.

The number of violent crimes in Houston went up by 8.9 percent from 2016 to 2017. “I think any increase in violent crime is a tragedy, but you want to put things like this in context,” Ames Grawert, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, told the Chronicle.

For 2018, so far, the murder rate isn’t yet clear.

“Houston’s first homicide came early on Jan. 1 when two brothers got into a deadly argument. Investigators have also looked into shootings with multiple victims, a roadside stabbing between a husband and wife, and a pair of homicides blocks away from each other,” reads the Chronicle. “So far this year, homicides in Houston are averaging roughly four per week, whereas preliminary data shows there was an average of five per week in 2017. Assuming 2018’s homicides rate holds steady, this year could be one of the least deadly years homicide-wise in recent history.”