An 11-year-old boy was declared deceased at a hospital on Sunday after, according to Houston city officials, he was shot while fleeing a home after ringing its doorbell on Saturday night.
The boy had been ringing doorbells in the area and running as part of a game known as “doorbell ditch,” the city said in a statement.
“A witness stated the male was running from a house, after ringing the doorbell, just prior to suffering a gunshot wound,” it said.
Officers responding to the shooting on the 9700 block of Racine Street released a person who had been detained for questioning, the city said.
The incident was reported about an hour before midnight, and the boy was transported to a hospital, where medical personnel confirmed his death on Sunday, officials stated.
NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston noted that multiple children were participating in the game and the shooting victim was initially hospitalized in critical condition.
“We shouldn’t have guns around kids, period. Because a bullet doesn’t have a name,” neighbor Theresa Jones told the station.
In the spring, an 18-year-old in Virginia was shot and killed while he and other teens engaged in ding-dong ditch pranks being filmed for TikTok, as reported by the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office in May. The homeowner, who was apprehended, claimed he believed a burglary was in progress at his home.
In California, a 45-year-old man who pursued a group of ding-dong ditch pranksters, leading to the deaths of three teenagers, was sentenced in 2023 to life imprisonment.
The investigation into the Houston shooting continues, the city said.
