2021 Houston homicide rate up 18% from 2020

Houston just recorded its 473rd homicide of the year, which means homicides are up 18 percent from last year.

“These holidays, I just don’t want to celebrate. I really don’t,” says Manda Lagway.

Lagway currently cares for her grandchildren, Greyson, Lyric and Gregory.

Both Greyson and Lyric survived a brutal attack in June that killed their mother, Donyavia Lagway, 29, and their father, Gregory Carhee, 35, and their sister, Harmony Carhee, six. age.

The suspect is still in prison.

“We don’t have a mother or nothing and all the fun things we used to have, we can’t do anymore because they’re not here,” explains Gregory.

So far this year, 473 people in our city have been murdered. Last year, the number was 400. In 2019, the number was 277.

“I just pray that people come together as a city of citizens, everything about the criminal justice system,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said. “At the end of the year, at the end of the month, the number keeps going down”.

The numbers have dropped since this spring, when our city’s homicide rate was 44 percent higher than it was last year.

Still, it’s little consolation for families facing another year without their loved one.