(NewsReady.com) – In October 2020, 11-year-old Dominic Sumicek and 41-year-old Menuelle Solomon were shot while sitting in a car in Houston, Texas. Solomon died at the scene. The child initially survived but passed away two days later.
Desmond Hawkins will now spend the rest of his life in prison for the murders. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office called the convicted killer a documented gang member. At the time of the killings, he was out on bond for a separate capital murder case. In that case, he’d allegedly shot and killed someone he was robbing.
On October 26, 2020, Solomon was sitting in his vehicle with his stepson, Sumicek, outside of their home. Suddenly, three masked gunmen walked up to the vehicle, and they all opened fire. Authorities said the crime was caught on video, which showed the killers firing up to 10 shots before running away.
District Attorney Kim Ogg said the child had his “whole life ahead of him” but was killed in a “cold-blooded ambush in broad daylight.” At the time of the murders, Hawkins was wearing a GPS monitor on his ankle. Authorities said he waited for at least three hours near Solomon’s home on the day of the killings. When the older victim backed into his driveway, Hawkins shot Sumicek twice and then Solomon four times. Assistant DA Christopher Condon said the evidence appeared to show it “was an orchestrated hit.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, Krissi Garcia, the boy’s mother, told KTRK that her husband had just picked her child up from school when they were shot. She said he tried to shield her son from the bullets. She called their murderers “cowards.”
After the sentence was handed down, Assistant DA Nancy Ta said Hawkins “laid in wait for three hours, during the light of day, to execute a young boy and his stepfather.” She said that he made a decision to kill a child before he turned 12, but pointed out that a jury of 12 has now decided how the killer will spend the rest of his days.
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