A teenager is now wanted on a capital murder charge after he allegedly shot and killed a man in an east Houston motel room over the weekend.
Julian Vela, 17, was charged for a shooting that occurred in on Sunday in a motel room in the Cloverleaf area.
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At around 1:30 p.m., deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded to a welfare check at the motel, where they found Joshua LaFrance lying on the bed of a unit, dead from multiple gunshot wounds. The person who alerted authorities allegedly knew LaFrance and identified Vela as the shooter.
According to court documents, authorities interviewed a teenage girl who was at the scene of the murder. She said that she, LaFrance, and Vela met at the motel room on Saturday night and casually hung out. At one point, the three drove to a nearby fast-food restaurant in LaFrance’s black Cadillac sedan and ate their food in his car, which was parked in the motel lot.
After eating, LaFrance and the girl went back into the motel room and laid in the bed. A short time later, Vela knocked at the door and asked to use the restroom. After coming inside and relieving himself, Vela left the room, notably not locking the door behind him.
Roughly 15 minutes later, Vela knocked on the door to use the restroom again, but he reentered on his own this time because the door was unlocked. The girl heard Vela walk out of the bathroom, and then she heard a gunshot.
She looked over to the other side of the bed and saw Vela standing over LaFrance, pointing a tan-colored pistol at him. LaFrance was gasping for air, having just been shot. Vela fired a second time, and LaFrance stopped breathing.
The girl put her hands up, afraid that she would be killed next. Vela ripped two chains off of LaFrance’s neck and demanded the girl help him look for the victim’s watch. She helped him, because she feared for her life.
Vela then pointed the gun at the girl, saying he would kill her if she didn’t give him her phone. She complied, and he turned it off. He ordered her to leave the motel room, and they got in LaFrance’s Cadillac and left.
They pulled the Cadillac over in an empty lot, and Vela ordered the girl to remove her shirt, which had the victim’s blood on it. He grabbed a towel from the car and began wiping blood off of the girl, and he burned the shirt and towel in the lot.
After the pair returned to the car, the girl said she asked Vela why he killed LaFrance, to which he said LaFrance had robbed him in the past and he was “not the one [to be messed with].”
During their car ride, Vela got on the phone with someone, whom he asked what he should do with the girl. The person told Vela to kill her, but Vela argued that she didn’t have anything to do with what happened. After hanging up with the unknown individual, Vela gave the girl her phone and told her to call a friend to come pick her up, adding that he would kill her if she called the police.
When the girl was talking to her friend, Vela demanded she put the phone on speaker, and he told the friend he would kill the girl if he didn’t come and get her as soon as possible. Vela then dropped the girl off at a gas station and drove off.
Surveillance footage captured near the scene corroborated the girl’s version of events.
Vela remains on the run at this time.
