‘He got killed over a lighter.’ Witnesses describe shooting at high school party.
It became clear, within an hour, the casual “kickback” they were allowing to be held at their home Friday night was turning into something more.
Alexis Vasquez, 24, and her girlfriend, Dora Chavez, 22, said a friend of theirs who is in high school had asked if he could have a few friends over for a gathering, and they obliged. Chavez also invited some of her younger cousins. Around midnight, there were only about 10 people at the house, some of them out in the front yard enjoying the warm fall night.
But, between midnight and 1 a.m., people who appeared to be teenagers started pouring into their home, one after another, Vasquez and Chavez recalled. Roughly 20 cars were parked outside, filling up their block of Gould Avenue in northwest Fort Worth, and a large crowd had congregated in the backyard where music was playing.
Vasquez and Chavez, who raise Vasquez’s four young children in the house, learned that a nearby party had gotten busted and the guests were coming to them, they said. They were annoyed and angry more than gravely concerned — until they heard the gunshots.
There were four or five of them around 1:30 a.m., coming from the backyard, they said. The crowd began to run through the front yard and they could hear people screaming, “Someone got shot!”
When they went to check out what had happened, Vasquez and Chavez said, they saw a young man who had been shot, his chest bloodied. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victim as Jose Liandro Hernandez, 20, of Granbury. He died of a gunshot wound to the chest, according to the autopsy.
Around six or seven party-goers carried Hernandez to the driveway and laid him down, tending to him, as others called 911. Vasquez and Chavez watched as he struggled, briefly, before he died.
“In the (backyard), his eyes were rolling into the back of his head. And when we brought him right here, his friend’s like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, y’all stop, I think he’s breathing again,’” Chavez said. “She’s like, ‘He’s squeezing my hand — you’re gonna be OK’ ... and then you can tell he’s fading out again.”
“It was already too late, because it was too close, I guess. However they shot him, it was too close.”
Witnesses told them the shooter had fired directly toward the deceased victim, she and Vasquez said, but he sprayed a couple of other people in the process.
One victim suffered a gunshot wound to the arm, according to Fort Worth police, and another was struck in the upper torso. They were both expected to survive. Police said one of those victims was an adult and the other was a juvenile. Their names were not released.
The shooter fled the scene, police said. No description of the shooter was released and no arrest was announced Saturday.
Hernandez’s body lay in their driveway for hours, until around 6 a.m., Chavez said. That’s when law enforcement took the body and left.
“I couldn’t sleep until I knew the body was off my driveway,” Chavez said. “I can’t just go to sleep peacefully when there’s someone dead at my house.”
Vasquez said on Saturday she was scared for her own children. She also feels bad for the family of the victim who was killed, she said.
“I couldn’t imagine my mom, or me, getting a phone call that my kid was shot and died,” she said.
Hernandez and his friends were apparently from Granbury, she said. She and Chavez could hear his friends talking to police after the incident, and they were telling officers he had been shot over a lighter.
The friends told police Hernandez had asked the shooter for his lighter back, Vasquez and Chavez said. Then, for some reason, the shooter got angry.
“He got killed over a lighter,” Chavez said. “He was just trying to ask for his lighter back and then the other guy got upset about it, and when he turned around, he shot him.”
The shooting at the high school party not only claimed the life of a young man and injured two others, but affected those who were in attendance, possibly for a long time to come. Vasquez and Chavez are only beginning to grapple with what happened.
A pool of blood stained their driveway Saturday morning after they got up from their limited sleep. A blanket that had been placed onto the man who died was still in their front yard, too.
They said they’d never hosted a party like that. Vasquez said she was thankful her oldest child was at a friend’s house, and that her other children were asleep and safe inside.
But she was left feeling afraid for area kids in high school, like her younger brother.
“I get scared when he tries to go to parties ... I would never think it would happen here,” she said. “You never know.”
This story was originally published September 28, 2019 at 8:19 AM.
