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A Texas mother wept and held a teddy bear as she spoke at a press conference Wednesday following the Valentine’s Day shooting death of her 9-year-old daughter.
“This is her right now, this is my baby, this is what I got,” said Gwen Alvarez about her daughter, Arlene.
The mother revealed the teddy bear she held throughout the press conference contained a recording of the heart monitor that kept her daughter, Arlene Alvarez, alive before she was taken off of life support. She squeezed the stuffed animal and her daughter’s final heart beats could be heard.
Arlene was riding with her family on their way to a Valentine’s Day dinner Monday night when Houston police say the family drove past a Chase bank. At the same time, alleged shooter, Tony Earls was chasing a man who had robbed him at gunpoint at the bank.
The Alvarez family described how the suspected robber was more than 100 feet away from them when Earls shot at them indiscriminately, even though they had nothing to do with the robbery. The family’s two other children, including an infant, were also in the car at the time of the shooting.
“We sped forward … literally he was probably about 10 feet away from our vehicle and still continued to spray the vehicle,” said Arlene’s father, Armando. “One [bullet] shot the gas tank. I know this other one is where it hit my daughter in the head.”
The girl’s mother said that by the time paramedics arrived, her little girl was already gone.
“The moment they told me they couldn’t do nothing about it, I didn’t want to let her go,” she said. “They told me, ‘Ma’am so sorry but she’s brain dead.’ They told me there’s nothing they can do. She’s not going to make it.”
The fourth-grader, who loved to make TikTok videos, was taken to the hospital but was eventually taken off life support and died Tuesday.
Earls, 41, was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault. He is currently being held in on a $30,000 bond. A spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said the office will look at possibly upgrading charges against Earls following Alvarez’s death.
During the press conference, the Alvarez family lawyer also revealed he would be taking legal action against Chase.
“This is not the first time that this has happened at that infamous address,” said lawyer Rick Ramos, referring to the bank. “Within five months, we have another senseless killing at an ATM machine at the same address, and we have to start asking questions of why (is) there not an off duty police officer there?”
Ramos pointed to another deadly shooting at the same ATM in October when Mary Jane Gonzalez was shot and killed over $40.
Ramos also said Earls cannot use self-defense to justify the shooting since he was no longer in imminent danger at the time he chased the robbery suspect and began shooting.
With Post Wires
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