A man who’d just been robbed shot at his attacker — but police say he killed a 9-year-old girl instead
Tony Earls, 41, has been charged with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, Houston police said.
Watching videos with her headphones on, 9-year-old Arlene Alvarez didn’t hear the gunfire or her mother screaming for everyone in the pickup truck to get down.
“‘Duck down, Arlene,'” Gwen Alvarez said Wednesday at a news conference, crying as she recounted her desperate pleas to save her young daughter. “‘Duck down, Arlene.'”
“I didn’t scream loud enough.”
Arlene, sitting in the back seat of her parents’ Ford F-250, was shot in the head Monday night as her father, Armando, stopped at a bank before heading to dinner at Spanky’s Pizza, one of his family’s favorite Houston restaurants. She was taken to a hospital where she died the next day.
On Monday night, Alvarez, an electrician, had gotten off work around 8:30 and planned to deposit money in the ATM at a Chase Bank branch before a late family dinner on Valentine’s Day. As he approached the bank around 9:45, Alvarez saw a robbery underway.
A man later identified as 41-year-old Tony Earls was in his vehicle at the bank’s ATM where a stranger approached and robbed him at gunpoint, Houston Police Department Executive Chief Matt Slinkard said at a news conference early Tuesday. As the attacker fled, Earls pulled his own gun, got out of his vehicle and started shooting as the Alvarez family happened upon the scene in the F-250, Slinkard said.
That’s when, according to Armando Alvarez, the shooter started firing at his family, getting as close as 10 feet as he “sprayed” bullets into the pickup truck. Police have said that Earls thought the robber had gotten into Alvarez’s pickup, KTRK reported.
One of the bullets shattered the back window and hit Arlene, Slinkard said.
Like his wife, Armando had been yelling for his family to duck and watched as everyone but Arlene obeyed. When he watched her drop, he initially thought she’d finally heard him. Then, he said, he realized he’d seen something else, something terrible.
“I thought she got down because I said, ‘Get down,'” the father said, “but I saw her go down too fast.” He stopped the pickup, got out and pulled his daughter out of the vehicle. Then, he held her.
“It is not something — ” he started to say before finding the words: “I hope nobody ever goes through this.”
Earls has been charged with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, Houston police said. Earls’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.
The Alvarezes’ lawyer said the family is considering legal action against JPMorgan Chase. They’ve hired Houston attorney Rick Ramos, who also represents Hector Gonzalez. In October, Gonzalez’s wife, 49-year-old Mary Jane, was shot to death at the same Chase Bank over $40, KTRK reported.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Ramos said Chase didn’t do enough between the two deadly robberies. The bank should have beefed up security, protected the ATM with a physical barrier or shut it down after hours, the attorney said.
“Within five months, we have another senseless killing at an ATM at the same address, and we have to start asking questions,” Ramos said.
When asked about Ramos’s comments, JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman Elizabeth Seymour told The Post in an email, “We are saddened by this tragic incident and have reached out to the Alvarez family to offer our sincere condolences. We are working closely with local officials who are handling the investigation.”
On Wednesday, family members remembered Arlene as an “old soul” who took care of her younger siblings. She often babysat the children who accompanied their mothers to the hair salon where Gwen worked, which let the adults enjoy some “mommy time.”
Arlene also loved performing, her aunt said, making videos on Facebook Live and TikTok. She prodded her mother to tell her stories about when she did hair at fashion shows.
“She was just an enjoyable little person who absolutely just loved life,” Ramos said.
Arlene was excited about her upcoming 10th birthday. Her mother was getting ready for it, about to set up a photo shoot and order her daughter a gown. Now, Gwen Alvarez said, she has to pick out a dress for her 9-year-old daughter to wear at her funeral.
“I don’t even know what to choose,” she said.
Instead of her daughter, she’s left with a teddy bear from the hospital that contains audio from Arlene’s last heartbeat. Alvarez clutched the stuffed animal on Wednesday, at times burying her face into the fluff and sobbing.
“This is what I got,” she said. “This is my baby.”
“This is my Arlene now.”
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