Public safety incident

Two young children and their mother were found dead inside a hotel room Friday in southwest Houston, according to Houston Police. Police say it appears the approximately 40-year-old woman shot her two young children and then killed herself.
The shooting took place at the Residence Inn by Marriott Houston Medical Center/NRG Park. That's on Kirby Drive at Main Street, less than a mile north of NRG Stadium.
Hotel staff told police the family checked into the room on Wednesday, but staff had not heard from them. Staff entered the room and discovered the bodies.
Police said Friday afternoon that homicide investigators are still looking at everything, but the woman appears to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot after killing her two children, a nine-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.
Friday's shooting makes Houston again the scene of an apparent murder-suicide where a parent killed their children—often called filicide or familicide. These cases are rare, but this is now Houston's second in 60 days. On May 4, Houston restaurateur Matthew Mitchell killed his wife, Thy Mitchell, and their two children before killing himself.

New study looks at common links in cases where parents kill children
Just two days after Houston's murder-suicide in May, the Journal of Interpersonal Violence published a study that looked at 3,974 filicide incidents over a 25-year period from 1999 to 2023. It found that:
- Child filicide, where the child victims are between the ages of 1 and 17, represented roughly half (53%) of all familicide cases. The others were neonaticide (4%), with a newborn less than a day old; infanticide (25%), with a child 1 to 364 days; and adult filicide (19%), where the victim was 18 years old or older
- Only one in five incidents (20%) involved multiple victims
- Child filicide reflects intrafamily conflicts, with a balanced mix of both male and female offenders and a notable increase in firearm use (28%)
- There is no single filicide offender profile
- Despite its severity, filicide remains unevenly examined
It should be noted that the study did not focus exclusively on homicide-suicide cases.

Better data on Texas murder-suicide cases coming in 2026
Other studies have also tried to find links in filicide cases, including murder-suicide cases, but Texas has historically not been part of those studies. That could change now that all 50 states, including Texas, are providing data to the National Violent Death Reporting System, which is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Texas joined in 2019 but this is the first year it will provide violent death data to the CDC from all 254 counties. Harris County was the first to join, and Texas then focused on 21 of its largest counties before expanding to all 254 counties.