Ahrens, 53, walked through a hall to investigate around 1 a.m. Sunday. He looked out a window and saw one of his neighbors in the complex standing behind a car and firing a shotgun at other neighbors fleeing the fire that police say the gunman had begun to drag from their rooms their. Minutes later, Michael James, who had been working late at a restaurant, came home to the apartment building to find his room on fire. After trying to call 911, James, 62, started to walk away when he was shot in the back. The gunman ended up shooting five neighbors, killing three of them. Bleeding, James fled to the front of the apartment building, where he found Houston police. Officers found the gunman across the street in the parking lot of a medical supply store, where he was fatally shot. “I don’t know what happened to him. It just became a frenzy,” James said Monday as he stood outside his burned-out room, still wearing the green medical gown he had been given while briefly hospitalized a day earlier. The owner of the apartment building, who identified the gunman as Roy Cravin, along with neighbors and police said the shooting may have been sparked by the man’s eviction on Saturday, which was preceded by his financial difficulties during the pandemic and a recent Colon cancer diagnosis. Authorities on Monday did not release the name of the shooter or the three people who were killed. The fatal shooting in Houston was one of several across the US last weekend, including in Detroit and Portland, Oregon, in which people were confronted with random gun violence while at home or in a store or walking their dog. Tony Mercurio, owner of the Houston apartment building, said Cravin had been a tenant for nine years and considered him a friend. But Mercurio said he made the difficult decision to evict Cravin after he hadn’t paid rent in a year. Mercurio said there didn’t appear to be any hard feelings when he went to Cravin’s room around 8 a.m. Saturday and got his keys. Cravin had worked as a bouncer at a club but lost his job when the business closed during the pandemic, Mercurio said. “Something happened in his head that I’m not sure what it was,” Mercurio said. Ahrens said Cravin first fatally shot the apartment building’s manager, who lives on the premises. He also injured the man’s dog, a German shepherd named Duke. The dog, which had an injured leg, ran away but was later found. Cravin then fatally shot two others, police said. Two other men, including James, were shot and wounded and another had minor injuries. “They were good people who were killed,” Mercurio said of his residents and manager, who had worked for him since 1989. When firefighters arrived, the gunman opened fire on them and they were forced to take cover until police fatally shot him, Houston Police Chief Troy Finer said. No firefighters or officers were injured. Mercurio said the fire destroyed eight of the 16 units, but he planned to rebuild the apartment building, which offers residents shared bathrooms and kitchens. Displaced residents will be offered vacant rooms in other apartment buildings owned by Mercurio. Ahrens said he doesn’t want to move because he wouldn’t be able to pay for transportation since he doesn’t have a car and usually walks to work. James said he is focused on trying to rebuild after losing everything in the fire. On Monday he wore a pair of gray trousers that someone had given him as all his clothes burned. The American Red Cross had given each of the residents of the apartment building a $500 gift card to help replace what they lost. “Every little bit helps,” Ahrens said.
Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter:
