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A Texas woman on her way to visit her cancer-stricken friend was shot dead by a teenage carjacker over the weekend, authorities said.
Marietta Allison was discovered lying on a northwest Houston sidewalk with a gunshot wound at around midnight Saturday morning, KHOU 11 reported.
Allison, the co-founder of her own travel company, was taken to a hospital but later died from her injuries.
Darius DeWayne Hall, 18, was spotted by officers at around 1 a.m. driving around in the stolen vehicle, sparking a police chase.
After the high-speed pursuit, he crashed the vehicle along the Southwest Freeway and tried to run, triggering an hours-long standoff in a nearby residential neighborhood, police said.
“I opened my door around 4:15 a.m., and there was an officer on his knees with a shield and one behind him with a gun pointing right down the stairs to that unit where they found him,” neighbor Ken Knisely told KHOU 11.
Hall has now been charged with capital murder, tampering with evidence, and evading arrest, according to the Houston Police Department.
Devastated friends and family have paid tribute to Allison, who was helping a friend undergoing cancer treatment when Hall allegedly murdered her.
Describing her as “like a sister,” pal Cassie Daniel became visibly emotional as she recalled how Allison had driven her back from the cancer treatment center in Daniel’s car at around 10:50 p.m. Friday.
“There wasn’t any parking, so Marietta had driven around the block to find a parking spot, and we heard the gunshot,” Daniel said in a Facebook post.
“We were later told that her heart stopped immediately when he [Hall] shot her in the neck,” Daniel said.
“The man took her purse, stole my car key, and took the car,” Daniel said, adding that Hall had been tracked down through the licence plate.
“They found him and barricaded [him] at an apartment complex where he had broken into an empty (thank God) unit,” she said.
“He left two guns in my car, and they have a shell casing on the scene so they can match ballistics. He claims the guns are not his,” she said.
“I was told that he picked up a 16-year-old prostitute (who has been a prostitute since she was 13 – my heart broke at that) who also saw him with a gun,” Daniel said.
“She was incredibly special to me. When we talked, we often talked about empathy, family, and our desire to grow and improve as individual human beings,” Allison’s nephew Nate James Bakke said on Facebook.
Hall was already under juvenile suspension for four previous charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, court records show.
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