{"id":194251,"date":"2025-09-02T13:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/194251\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T13:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:52:11","slug":"houston-man-charged-with-murder-in-shooting-death-of-11-year-old-boy-who-was-playing-ding-dong-ditch-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/194251\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston man charged with murder in shooting death of 11-year-old boy who was playing \u2018ding dong ditch\u2019 \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/articles\/news\/criminal-justice\/2021\/09\/21\/409014\/former-hpd-officer-pleads-guilty-for-his-involvement-in-u-s-capitol-insurrection\/attachment\/dsc03203-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-392119\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/DSC03203-1-1000x667.jpg\" alt=\"Houston Police Department SUV\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\"   data-eio=\"p\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lucio Vasquez \/ Houston Public Media<\/p>\n<p>Pictured is a Houston Police Department vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>A 42-year-old Houston man was arrested early Tuesday and charged with murder in the weekend shooting death of an 11-year-old boy who was playing a prank by ringing on doorbells and running.<\/p>\n<p>Harris County court records show Leon Gonzalo Jr. was charged with murder on Monday and arrested shortly after 1 a.m. Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The shooting occurred at about 11 p.m. Saturday in the 9700 block of Racine Street in East Houston, according to the Houston Police Department, which said its officers responded to a shooting call and learned that a boy had been shot after being involved in a game of &#8220;ding dong ditch.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Officers were told the male was ringing doorbells of homes in the area and running away,&#8221; HPD said wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/cityofhouston.news\/investigation-into-fatal-shooting-at-9700-racine-street\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sunday news release<\/a>. &#8220;A witness stated the male was running from a house, after ringing the doorbell, just prior to suffering a gunshot wound.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The boy was transported to a hospital Saturday night and pronounced dead on Sunday, according to HPD, which had not released the boy\u2019s name as of Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Police initially detained one person at the scene of the shooting who was questioned and released, HPD said. An arrest was made about two days later.<\/p>\n<p>A defense attorney for Gonzalo was not listed in online court records as of Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucio Vasquez \/ Houston Public Media Pictured is a Houston Police Department vehicle. A 42-year-old Houston man was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":194252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[281,4219,106113,4345,5429,46692,46693,425,54513,50,7207,108356,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-194251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-court","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-ding-dong-ditch","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-police-department","13":"tag-houston-shooting","14":"tag-houston-shooting-deaths","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-murder-charge","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-police","19":"tag-pranks","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115135037459527896","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}