By Jesús Jiménez
The son of a politician from the Dominican Republic was fatally shot outside a gas station in Houston on Monday night in what the police said they believed was a “targeted” drive-by shooting.
The Houston Police Department on Wednesday identified the man who was killed as Luis Alfredo Pacheco Rojas, 34, son of Alfredo Pacheco, president of the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic. Another 29-year-old man who was injured by gunfire in the attack had not yet been publicly identified.
The incident began around 7 p.m. Monday, when Luis Pacheco and three men in a black Cadillac Escalade stopped at a gas station in southeast Houston, according to the Police Department.
The four men went inside the gas station, and immediately afterward they returned to the Escalade.
Assistant Chief Adrian Rodriguez of the Police Department initially said at a news conference Monday that at that point, four other men armed with what police called long guns arrived in two vehicles — a silver Dodge Charger and a silver Mercedes-Benz — and began shooting at the Escalade.
On Tuseday, the Police Department clarified in a statement that only three attackers were involved — two of whom had been in the Dodge and another in the Mercedes.
Pacheco was shot and later pronounced dead at a hospital, according to the Police Department. The other man who was injured by gunfire was “conscious and breathing” at a hospital Monday night, Rodriguez said.
“I do believe that these individuals in the Escalade were targeted,” Rodriguez said Monday.
Detectives were working to determine a possible motive for the shooting, the Police Department said. Authorities were also searching for the gunmen who fled the gas station after the shooting. Rodriguez described them as Hispanic men in their 20s or 30s.
The Police Department on Tuesday released photos of the gunmen from surveillance footage.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Alfredo Pacheco said his son had been living out of the country.
“I sincerely thank friends and colleagues for their solidarity in this difficult time,” he wrote in the post.
Alfredo Pacheco has worked in politics since the 1990s, and since 2020, he has led the Chamber of Deputies, part of the legislative branch in the Dominican Republic. He has also been a member of the National Council of the Judiciary since 2020, the body responsible for evaluating and electing judges of the Supreme Court of Justice, the Superior Electoral Court and the Constitutional Court.