2 women killed and 2 men wounded in Houston shooting, sheriff says

HOUSTON —

A woman and her daughter-in-law were killed and two men hospitalized with gunshot wounds in a shooting authorities believe stemmed from a romantic dispute, a Houston-area sheriff said Sunday. A small child escaped the gunfire unharmed.

Deputies were called to a home in northwest Houston Sunday morning and arrived to find multiple gunshot victims, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said at a news conference.

Gonzalez said a 65-year-old woman and her 28-year-old daughter-in-law, who both lived at the home where the shooting occurred, were confirmed dead on the scene. Two men were taken to a hospital, where they were in serious but stable condition, the sheriff said.

A 2-year-old was inside the house at the time of the shooting, but a relative carried the toddler to safety, he said.

Investigators were still trying to piece together what happened in the dispute, which involved as many as three shooters and seven people total, the sheriff said. He said in an earlier statement on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that the shooting may have stemmed from a break-up or divorce.

Most of the shots were fired in a house in a residential neighborhood about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of downtown Houston, but there was also evidence of gunfire outside, Gonzalez said.

The sheriff did not identify any of the people shot, nor the suspected shooters, but said there is no active threat to the community.