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A 2-year-old boy was found dead inside his family’s SUV hours after a man shot and killed his father at a Houston gas station and then stole the vehicle, police said Wednesday.
Officials have not yet determined the child’s cause of death, but believe it may have been heat exhaustion, said Houston Police Deputy Executive Director Larry Satterwhite. Authorities believe the suspect left the SUV with the child locked inside and the engine turned off as temperatures reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit in Houston on Tuesday.
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A 38-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday and faces charges of murder and tampering with evidence.
The shooting happened during an argument about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday, and authorities did not find the boy’s body until that night, Satterwhite said.
A 2-year-old boy was found dead in an SUV hours after his father was killed at a Houston gas station.
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Satterwhite said officers initially did not know about the boy when they began investigating the shooting. It wasn’t until his mother called police at 6:36 p.m. and reported her son and husband were missing that they knew they had to look for the boy, Satterwhite said.
Police then found the missing SUV with the child inside about a mile from the shooting. They started CPR on the toddler, but he was dead, Satterwhite said.
Satterwhite said authorities wish they had known about the boy when they began investigating.
“No one wishes more than I do that we would have had more seeds, that we would have found this child in time,” he said.
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Authorities had not released the suspect’s name, pending formal charges in court.
