HOUSTON – A woman was killed and another was injured Thursday after a shooting that happened in front of a child at a northwest Harris County apartment complex, deputies said.
The man accused of killing the woman and shooting his wife appeared in court Friday morning.
James Hickam, 58, is charged with murder in the case.
Prosecutors said a witness identified Hickam as the shooter, before officers recovered a gun from his apartment.
“She had heard a very loud noise and looked out of her window and saw this man holding a long-barreled shotgun pointing it at the vehicle owned by the deceased,” said the prosecutor.
Harris County deputies responded at about 2 p.m. Thursday to reports of two people shot at the Windfern Apartments near the Sam Houston Race Park.
Deputies said Hickam and his wife had been arguing all day and ended up in the apartment complex parking lot, where the man shot the woman as well as another woman who was pulling into the complex in her car.
Deputies said Krystle Watson, 26, was on her way to drop off her 2-year-old child at a relative's house.
“She was on her way to a job interview and she was dropping the baby off at her grandmother’s. She just pulled up and this argument between this couple had already been going on,” said LaShawn Watson.
Deputies said she was an innocent bystander and might have been hit by a stray bullet.
“This is a senseless crime that shouldn’t have happened,” cousin LaShawn Watson said. “A 2-year-old daughter is going to grow up without a mom. We have to be the village for her.”
Watson died in front of the child, deputies said.
“Everything she did was for her daughter. It was a wrong place, wrong time... situation,” the father of Watson's daughter said.
The wife was taken to a hospital. She was in critical condition on Friday.
Hickam is being held on $150,000 bond.
Watson's family have created a GoFundMe page for funeral costs and expenses, click link to donate.
