A 42-year-old Texas man, Gonzalo Leon jnr, has been charged with murder after an 11-year-old boy was fatally shot following a 'ding-dong ditch' prank in Houston. Photo / Getty Images
A 42-year-old Texas man, Gonzalo Leon jnr, has been charged with murder after an 11-year-old boy was fatally shot following a 'ding-dong ditch' prank in Houston. Photo / Getty Images
A 42-year-old Texas man has been charged with murder in the case of a young boy who was fatally shot after a “ding-dong ditch” prank at a Houston home over the weekend, police said Tuesday.
Gonzalo Leon jnr, of Houston, was arrested early on Tuesday morning after officials filed acomplaint and the murder charge on Monday, according to online court records and the Harris County district attorney’s office, which consulted on the case.
According to police, an 11-year-old boy rang the doorbell of a Houston home late Saturday night before running away. He was shot shortly after, police said. The boy, who a witness said had been ringing doorbells and running away at other homes in the area, was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on Sunday, police said in a news release. Police on Tuesday identified the boy as Julian Guzman.
Details about the night remain sparse. Leon lived in the area where the incident occurred, according to police statements and online records, but it’s unclear whether he lived at one of the homes the boy had run from before he was shot.
On Sunday, police said they had questioned one person in the incident and later released them without making any arrests that day. Houston police did not respond to further questions from The Washington Post about the incident.
The complaint, filed in Harris County court, and other documents in the case were not immediately available for review.
Ding-dong ditching, a prank children have pulled for generations, has become popular fodder for videos on TikTok, where users record themselves in the act.
Ding-dong ditching is a harmless prank popular among younger kids. Photo / 123rf
In May, a Virginia teenager was shot and killed while recording a ding-dong ditch prank alongside two friends. Authorities charged a man with second-degree murder, malicious wounding and use of a firearm in commission of a felony in that case.
In 2023, a man was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder after he chased six teenage boys in a car after they drove off following a ding-dong ditch prank in Corona, California. He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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