Just after midnight Saturday shots rang out on Katy Briar Drive in the Morton Ranch Subdivision off Mason Road. As neighbors came out to investigate they witnessed two males running for a vehicle and fled. They found a male dead in the street. A 25-year-old veteran has been identified by his family as James Sebastian Ayala, the victim. His brother says the victim served in the Army, and leaves behind his five children. His family described him as a good man, and says they are devastated by his passing.
Detectives say a 17-year-old man found out his girlfriend was cheating on him with the victim, and asked the couple to come over. The two did, going to Darian Mitchell’s home. That is when Mitchell says he watched his friend, the 17-year-old accused gunman, kill the man.
“When he shot him, his girlfriend started screaming and then he ran,” Mitchell says. “And then he shot again, and then everyone started coming out and screaming.”
Close to 5am a deputy at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office West Substation saw a vehicle in the parking lot with it’s lights on. As he approached the shooters mother approached the deputy and told him her son came home and told her he had shot Ayala. She brought him to the Sheriff’s Office to turn himself in. As the shooter got out of the vehicle he pulled a gun and shot himself in the head. He was transported to the hospital but died.
