80-year-old disabled veteran in critical condition after being assaulted in N. Harris County

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – Authorities are searching for a suspect they say struck and severely injured a disabled veteran during an altercation in the parking lot of a grocery store in north Harris County Friday.

Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said it happened at the 1400 block of FM 1960 W. The address is a Food Town grocery store.

Sgt. Jeff Thomas said the call dropped as an aggravated robbery around 2 p.m., however, upon further investigation, no items were found to have been taken from the victim.

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“We have no proof of that, but we do know there was an altercation between two gentlemen,” Thomas said. “It was put out as an aggravated robbery, I don’t know why that was, but after watching the video, nothing was taken from the complainant.”

The 80-year-old victim was flown from Houston Northwest Medical Center to Kingwood Hospital and is in critical condition.

Thomas said the suspect is believed to be between 55-60 years old. He fled the scene in a maroon Ford F150 with running boards that appear to be tan or white.

“He’s a pretty large gentleman, we think between like 6′2 and 6′4, probably over 250 pounds,” Thomas said.

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Although authorities are not sure what the altercation was about, there is surveillance video and witnesses they have been interviewing.

“Some of the witnesses have told us both are frequent visitors at this store,” Thomas said.

In the video they have seen so far, Thomas said the body language of the two people showed no indication there was about to be a confrontation.

“It didn’t look very confrontational, it looked pretty cordial, shortly thereafter the suspect struck the complainant,” he said.

The man fell to the ground afterwards.

Thomas asks anyone with any information to please call Crime Stoppers or the sheriff’s office.