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A mom-to-be in Houston, Texas, was fatally shot along with her unborn child on Friday evening, September 16, just one day before her scheduled baby shower.
KTRK reported that 20-year-old Jennifer Hernandez was in the passenger seat of a blue Nissan Sentra with her boyfriend when she was shot dead by another driver on the road. Her boyfriend was shot twice, but managed to survive the attack, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez confirmed.
Hernandez was taken to hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The car had bullet holes through the doors and windows, after the couple were shot at while leaving a Shell gas station on Airtex Drive and Ella Boulevard.
Sheriff Gonzalez said a driver in a white, four-door sedan with tinted windows and a paper license plate drove up beside the couple's car and shot into it multiple times. Deputies told KTRK that the suspect's car continued to drive eastbound on Airtex Drive, heading toward I-45.
In the U.S., gun violence has resulted in 32,068 deaths this year, as per Gun Violence Archive. It's also led to 28,698 injuries.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office hasn't identified a motive for the shooting, telling KTRK that there's a chance it could have been road rage, but it added that the driver claimed there had been no prior interaction with the shooter.
"According to the driver, he said there was no interaction before that. They did stop at the gas station just west of us here and he said he has no idea where the vehicle came from. It just came out of nowhere and started shooting at him," Sgt. Ben Beall said.
"We are absolutely devastated by Jennifer's passing. Nana was a wonderful daughter, a wonderful sister, and would have been a wonderful mother," a family friend said, on a GoFundMe page set up to help cover the expenses of the funeral.
Hernandez's baby would have been the first grandchild and nephew of the family, who now want whoever killed the expecting mother to be held responsible.
Anyone with information can contact the Homicide Unit on 713-274-9100 or anonymously call Crime Stoppers on 713-222-TIPS (8477).
At the end of August, a woman in Houston was killed at a gas station in an apparent ambush attack in which a man fired several times into her parked car. Police said that the victim was sitting in the driver's seat of the car when the man ran up to the vehicle and fired bullets several times.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris County Sheriff's Office for comment.
