The Columbine High School massacre, often referred to as simply Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher; ten were killed in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history until December 2012. It is still considered one of the most infamous massacres in the U.S. for inspiring many other school shootings and bombings; the word "Columbine" has since become a byword for modern school shootings. As of 2024, Columbine is still the deadliest school shooting in Colorado and one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States.
Matricide is the act of killing one's own mother.
Frazier Othel Thompson III, better known by his stage name Trae tha Truth, is an American rapper. He embarked on a recording career in 1998, and established local prominence in the Texas hip hop scene with his solo debut, Losing Composure (2003). His second and third albums, Same Thing Different Day (2004) and Restless (2006), followed thereafter, the latter of which was his debut on Rap-a-Lot Records.
Quanell X is an activist and leader of the New Black Panther Nation in Houston, Texas.
The Joe Horn shooting controversy occurred on November 14, 2007, in Pasadena, Texas, United States, when local resident Joe Horn shot and killed two burglars outside his neighbor's home. Recordings of Horn's exchange with emergency dispatch indicated that he was asked 14 times not to interfere with the burglary, because police would soon be on scene. The shootings resulted in debates regarding self-defense, castle doctrine laws, and Texas laws relating to use of deadly force to prevent or stop property crimes. The undocumented status of both burglars was highlighted because of the U.S. border controversy. On June 30, 2008, Horn was cleared by a grand jury in the Pasadena shootings.
The Charles T. Terrell Unit is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison located in unincorporated Brazoria County, Texas, with a Rosharon, Texas postal address; it is not inside the Rosharon census-designated place. The facility is located on Farm to Market Road 655, 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Farm to Market Road 521. The prison, has about 16,369 acres (6,624 ha) of land, is co-located with Ramsey Unit and Stringfellow Unit. The prison is in Rosharon, and about 35 miles (56 km) south of Houston.
Christine Marie Paolilla is a convicted American mass murderer who is serving a life sentence for fatally shooting four people, including two of her friends, in their Clear Lake City, Texas, home on July 18, 2003. The killings, which came to be known as the Clear Lake Murders, made national headlines.
The Texas Killing Fields is a title used to roughly denote the area surrounding the Interstate Highway 45 corridor southeast of Houston, where since the early 1970s through the early 2000s, more than 30 bodies have been found. The bodies along the corridor were mainly of girls or young women. Furthermore, many additional young girls have disappeared from this area who are still missing. Most of the victims were aged between 12 and 25 years. Some shared similar physical features, such as similar hairstyles.
On July 9, 2014, a mass shooting occurred in a home located in northern Harris County, Texas, near the Spring census-designated place, a suburban area of the Greater Houston area, leaving six family members dead, four children, and a lone survivor. Ronald Lee Haskell, 34, was apprehended after a standoff that lasted several hours. Haskell was related to the victims via his ex-wife.
The Broken Arrow murders, otherwise known as the Bever family massacre, were a familicide and mass stabbing that occurred on July 22, 2015, in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The perpetrators, Robert and Michael Bever, murdered their parents and 3 siblings. It was the deadliest crime and mass murder in the city of Broken Arrow, until a murder-suicide in October 2022 which killed 8 people.
The murder of Darren Goforth refers to the shooting death of a ten-year deputy sheriff of the Harris County Sheriff's Office on August 28, 2015. Goforth, who was in uniform at the time, was killed by Shannon Miles, a repeat offender with a history of mental illness, who shot Goforth repeatedly in the back of the head with a .40 caliber handgun while Goforth was fueling his car. Miles' mother provided an alibi, but the police found the murder weapon in his garage, and he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty; he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in September 2017.
On the night of September 6, 2018, 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean was murdered in Dallas, Texas, by off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger, who entered Jean's apartment and fatally shot him. Guyger, who said that she had entered Jean's apartment believing it was her own and believed Jean to be a burglar, was initially charged with manslaughter. The absence of a murder charge led to protests and accusations of racial bias because Jean—an unarmed black man—was killed in his own home by a white off-duty officer who had apparently disregarded police protocols. On November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on a charge of murder. On October 1, 2019, she was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment the following day. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2021.
On January 28, 2019, in the Pecan Park area in the East End district of Houston, Houston Police Department (HPD) officers initiated a no-knock raid on a house, killing the two homeowners, a husband and wife: Dennis Wayne Tuttle and Rhogena Ann Nicholas. They were aged 59 and 58, respectively. Five HPD officers sustained injuries.
On January 29, 2008, in Galveston County, Texas, United States, three-month-old Alijah Mullis was found dead along a roadside at Seawall Boulevard. Investigations later connected the victim's father as a suspect behind the murder, and the father, Travis James Mullis, surrendered himself and confessed to the crime.
On November 9, 1994, 33-year-old Farah Fratta was gunned down at her home in Atascocita, Texas. Investigations revealed that Robert Alan Fratta, a police officer and the estranged husband of Farah, had masterminded her murder by hiring two men to kill her, for which the motive was related to the unresolved divorce lawsuit between the couple and their fight for custody of their children.
