Half of Houston's Carjackings Happen at Victims' Home

Feb. 06--The carjackers came three days after Christmas, bullets flying, in a darkened driveway where a Houston mechanic worked under scant light to jump-start the battery of a Ford Explorer.

Their target was a 2003 red Ford Expedition, their victim 42-year-old Miguel Rodriguez, shot in the chest in front of his own house.

Nearly every day in Houston, carjacking thugs target the young and the old, the rich and the poor, in a chilling crime of opportunity that 50 percent of the time happens in the driveway or parking lot of the victim's home, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of police records.

They hit clunker cars and luxury sedans; they drive away with children in tow, use guns and muscle to pull victims from vehicles, sometimes even killing them. The Chronicle's review of homicide records shows that over a two-year period, at least eight victims were killed during carjackings.

One of them was a 3-year-old girl shot with an AK-47 rifle as she sat in her father's Pontiac Grand Prix in March 2010.

At least 1,130 carjacking crimes occurred in Houston from 2010 though 2011, according to the Chronicle's analysis. Seventy percent of them remain unsolved for lack of sufficient witnesses.

"It's crime of equal opportunities. Whether it's a high-dollar neighborhood or low-dollar neighborhood," said Lt. Colin Weatherly from HPD's robbery division. "An easy victim is what they are looking for."

Rodriguez and 3-year-old Charissa Powell, it turns out, were exactly that.

"If you put yourself momentarily in the mind of a perpetrator, it makes sense to me that you wait until somebody comes home alone and nobody else is out there," said David Crump, a professor of University of Houston Law Center who once served as an assistant district attorney of Harris County. "You have the victim isolated, they are weaker, and they are not as careful maybe at home as out in the public. And there's less likely to be anybody who's armed."

Rodriguez told the Chronicle he was working on his SUVs when he heard a low male voice say, "Raise your hand." As he turned around, a bullet hit him in the chest. Within a few seconds, the man shot another five times; Rodriguez rolled under a trailer truck to protect himself.

He couldn't see the shooter's face because the car's headlights flashed in his eyes. The shooters drove away with the Expedition and later abandoned it. The culprits have not been caught.

"Carjacking is no different than any other robbery. How good our chance of solving the problem depends on how good our victims' statements are," said HPD's Weatherly.

Experts say carjackers want victims' valuables and the car, sometimes for illegal resale, and sometimes because they want to use the car to quickly commit another crime, even at the cost of victims' lives.

"They want the car so badly that they don't even want to negotiate or spend time explaining this is a carjacking. They just shoot the person and take the car," said Crump.

The father of 3-year-old Charissa Powell told police he was loading his family into their car when a man approached, pointed an AK-47 at him and demanded the car keys. Charles Powell said he thought it was a prank.

As he tried to take his kids from the car, the robber started firing. The bullets hit Charissa in the chest and she later died. His one-year-old son was hit by bullet fragments but survived.

The shooter was Johnathan Hunter, 20. He and his conspirator, Alton Barnes, were charged with aggravated robbery and sentenced to state jail for 38 years and 20 years, respectively.

One apartment complex at 3737 Hillcroft in southwest Houston has been hit five times since 2010, the last one in June. Four of the crimes are unsolved, though police says they have stepped up enforcement in that area.

Public streets, the parking lots of convenience stores, malls, nightclubs, restaurants, and gas stations account for the other half of the total number of incidents from 2010 through 2011, the Chronicle analysis shows.

In November, a woman was ordered to give up her car after she loaded her groceries at an H-E-B store parking lot at Gulfgate Mall. A witness recorded the license number of a getaway car, which helped police make an arrest.

Data analysis shows the biggest concentrations for carjackings are areas near Wilcrest at Beechnut, I-45 at Scott, South Wayside Drive and Howard Drive.

But police say there's no place that's immune. Carjackers look for people who don't pay attention to their surroundings, are talking on cellphones or dealing with children and shopping bags.

"Just be aware of your surroundings," said Weatherly. "When you go into your car, you need to get in your car as quickly as you can."

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