Shots fired at Sen. John Whitmire's Houston office

HOUSTON – Houston Police and Texas Rangers are searching for the suspects responsible for shooting into state Senator John Whitmire's Houston office early Thursday morning.
 
The office is housed in a former residential home in the 800 block of Yale in the Houston Heights.
 
No one was in the building at the time.
 
“This is serious,” Whitmire said. “I'm certainly concerned for my staff. When they got here this morning, they thought the damage inside was weather-related. Then a maintenance man noticed a bullet hole. Then when H.P.D. got here, they noticed multiple shots.”
 
Houston police said four bullet holes were found in the exterior walls of the house, apparently fired from the street. The slugs ricocheted through the interior, gouging the sheet rock walls in several places. One bullet smashed through a framed U.S. flag that was hanging on one wall.
 
Several neighbors heard multiple shots around 12:30 a.m. Friday and called police.
 
“It's pretty scary, my heart was racing last night,” Amy Crouser said. “My heart is racing right now when I heard it was gunshots."
 
“It just sounded like a semi-automatic of some sort, something really fast,” Teresa Vandiver said. Vandiver lives about four blocks from Whitmire's office. She said she found five spent
.223 caliber rifle shells in the street in front of her house Thursday morning and turned them over to police.
 
“The fact is,” she said, “this gunfire was going on all the way from 8th Street to 13th Street, and from Yale all the way over to Tulane Street.”
 
Vandiver said many of her neighbors reported the gunfire to HPD and the Precinct 1 Harris County Constable's Office last night and this morning.
 
“We have reports of gunshots being heard in the area overnight; we're going to be checking into that,” HPD spokesman Kese Smith said.
 
Whitmire has served in the state Legislature for 43 years. He is currently the longest serving member of the Texas Senate and the head of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
 
Police are looking at surveillance video from nearby security cameras.
 
Whitmire has made news recently for his comments in the case of Shannon Miles, the man accused of killing Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Darren Goforth.

Whitmire made news recently by expediting Miles' transfer to a state mental hospital ahead of other people waiting to get in for treatment, following a court ruling that Miles is currently incompetent to stand trial for Goforth's murder. A judge granted a motion by Miles' attorney Monday to prevent Miles from being transferred ahead of other inmates.
 
"I could sit here and speculate all day. I have no reason to believe it's related to that case. I deal with hundreds of people and obviously it's what you don't know that scares you the most," said Whitmire.
 
There's a lot of people that know me and I don't know them," Whitmire said Thursday.

After saying he wouldn't speculate on possible suspects or a motive in the shooting, Senator Whitmire described a man who approached him Wednesday night while he was dining with friends.
 
“A strange guy came up last night in (a) trench coat. And this morning somebody reminded me of him. He was a little creepy.” Whitmire said.

He said the man falsely claimed to be a police officer. When Whitmire declined his offer to buy a drink, he said the man went outside into the rain, but continued to stare at Whitmire and his group. He said police are looking for the man, who is known to the restaurant staff.
 
Senator Whitmire said he's worried about the safety of his staff. Deputies from the Harris County Precinct One Constable's office were assigned to watch the property around the clock Thursday until further notice.
 
Police also recovered security video from an electrical contracting business next door to check it for possible leads in the case.