A 6-year-old girl allegedly killed her infant brother six months ago and the children’s father was charged this week.
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.
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.
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.
For 2018, so far, the murder rate isn’t yet clear.