Two cheerleaders shot after opening door to wrong car
Two cheerleaders in Texas were shot on Tuesday after one tried to get into the wrong car.
A group of four high school athletes were returning from practice at the Woodlands Elite Cheer Company gym outside Houston to their home near Austin, an almost 3 hour trip, early on Tuesday morning.
Before the trip, the group used a supermarket parking lot in Elgin, Texas as a carpool lot.
When the group arrived at the parking lot around 12.15am on their return trip, the driver pulled up to a parked car, which she thought belonged to one of the cheerleaders, Heather Roth.
Roth opened the door of the parked car, realized it wasn’t hers, and returned to the carpool.
‘As we were backing up, I see the guy get out of the passenger door. And I roll my window down, I was trying to apologize to him. Then halfway, my window was down, he just threw his hands up and pulled out a gun,’ Roth said at a prayer vigil that was livestreamed on Instagram.
That’s when the man in the passenger seat began firing ‘multiple’ shots into the athletes’ vehicle, the Elgin Police Department stated.
‘He just started shooting at all of us,’ Roth said. She was grazed by a bullet, and was treated and released at the scene.
The other victim, Payton Washington, was seriously injured, and had to be transported to a hospital by helicopter in critical condition.
Washington was shot twice, once in the leg and back, ABC 13 reported.
Washington, a high school senior, had recently committed to Baylor University’s Acrobatics and Tumbling team. Felecia Mulkey, the team’s coach, visited Washington in the hospital.
‘Payton is a strong young lady, if you know her, you know that about her,’ Mulkey said. ‘I have no doubt she’s going to get through this. She’s an amazing athlete but a better human, and that’s why she’s a part of our Baylor family.’
After working through the night to identify the shooter, police in Elgin arrested Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr, 25, on Tuesday.
Rodriguez was charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony.
Washington’s friends and family have set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her legal funds. The fundraiser has already generated over $60,000.
This is the third incident of gun violence against a young person after arriving at the wrong location in just one week. On Thursday, April 13, an 84-year-old man shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl twice in Kansas City, Missouri.
Then on Sunday, a 65-year-old man shot into a car driving down the wrong driveway in Hebron, New York, killing 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis.
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