Man charged with murder of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes

(Image credit: ABC 13 Eyewitness News/Screenshot)

published 6 January 2019

A man named Eric Black Jr. has been arrested and charged with capital murder for the death of Jazmine Barnes, the 7-year-old Houston girl killed last month while riding in a car with her family.

A second suspect, one Larry Woodruffe, has also been arrested and is reportedly thought to be the shooter. The local sheriff's office is still investigating the motive behind the shooting and has said it may be "a result of mistaken identity."

Barnes' mother, LaPorsha Washington, who was in the car when the attack occurred, has suggested a possible racial motive. "I have no tint on my windows or anything so you can see there is a mother — a black mother — with daughters, beautiful children," she said. "You took my baby from me, and you have no care in the world." Early reports suggested the perpetrator was a white man, but both Black and Woodruffe are black.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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