Here are things to know for Tuesday, September 7:
1. Man dead after gunmen follow, shoot at pickup truck in northeast Houston, police say
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A man is dead after a confrontation at a northeast Houston gas station Monday night, police said. Officers said it appears the victim was followed by suspects he may have been arguing with.
Police said the shooting happened in the 6500 block of Winfield around 11 p.m.
Homicide investigators said the incident began about a mile away from where the shooting happened at a Valero gas station, where words were exchanged between two groups. A man in a white pickup truck got out and approached the people in the other vehicle, police said.
Officers said the people in the white pickup truck then drove away and the other vehicle followed. That’s when police said the suspects opened fire on the white pickup truck, hitting the man in the back seat and killing him.
2. ‘Get these people off the street’: Mom of son who was gunned down in her driveway pleads for public’s help in finding his killer
It’s been more than a month without an arrest for the case of a Houston man who was murdered outside of his home on July 30.
“I heard about six shots. ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,’” Rhonda Hensley recalled. “(In) the neighborhood they’re always shooting, but it sounded too close. Then I heard ‘Boom, boom, boom’ again.”
The gunshots were coming from an assault rifle in Hensley’s driveway. Her 33-year-old son Ronald Green Jr. was the target.
“That was like a hit. Nothing else was touched,” she said pointing to her garage door.
Surveillance video released by Houston police showed a red four-door Chevy sedan drive by the northeast Houston home. Seconds later, Green could be seen backing his white vehicle into his mother’s driveway. Moments later, the red car returned and a thin-dressed man in black runs up to Green’s car, opens fire and hops back into the red car.
3. WHO monitoring new coronavirus variant ‘Mu,’ adding it to watchlist
The World Health Organization (WHO) has added a new coronavirus variant called “Mu”— known by scientists as B.1.621 — to its “variant of interest” list, The New York Times reports.
According to the Times, the new variant was added to the organization’s watchlist because of preliminary evidence “Mu” can evade immunity provided by vaccines and antibodies.
WHO listed the “Mu” strain as a variant of interest on Aug. 30.
4. Mu COVID variant found in at least 50 patients at Houston Methodist Hospital, doctors confirm
Doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital have discovered cases of a new variant of COVID-19 among patients being treated for the virus, the hospital confirmed Monday to KPRC 2.
The World Health Organization last week identified the “Mu” variant as a “variant of interest.”
Since the designation, doctors at Houston Methodist confirmed cases of the Mu variant in roughly 50 patients.
“We had our first case of Mu back in May,” said Dr. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist and a clinical pathologist.
Long said doctors didn’t refer to those cases as the so-called “Mu” variant until the World Health Organization designated the variant as such last week.
5. Doctors say ‘second guessing’ from patients, families becoming more common during COVID treatment
The same questions are becoming more frequent, “Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you do this? I saw on TV that this is good,” said Dr. Joseph Varon of United Memorial Medical Center in North Houston.
Varon and another doctor KPRC 2 Investigates spoke to off-camera said they are being put on the defensive by patients and their families who are second-guessing their efforts.
“These people that come to me, especially the unvaccinated, they question everything,’ said Varon. The other doctor says they have been berated consistently in recent weeks with some frustrations being aired out over social media.
Both doctors are making it clear that they are being grilled every single day by skeptical patients and their families.