Houston gang member sentenced to life in prison for killing 11-year-old boy while out on bond

A documented Texas gang member wearing a GPS-equipped ankle monitor while free on bond for capital murder when he ambushed and shot an 11-year-old boy and his stepfather trying to shield the boy from gunfire has been sentenced to life in prison without parole, prosecutors said.

Desmond Hawkins, 23, was convicted of capital murder for fatally shooting 11-year-old Dominic Sumicek and his stepfather, Menuell Solomon, 41, while they sat in Solomon’s car outside their home on Oct. 26, 2020, authorities said. Jurors quickly convicted Hawkins late Monday after a two-week trial. He was automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“It’s not fair. He was just barely 11,” Krissi Garcia, the boy’s mother and Solomon’s wife, told ABC Houston affiliate KTRK then. “He was a sweet boy. It’s one thing to take a grown man but to take an innocent child, you just don’t do that.”

“A little boy with his whole life ahead of him was murdered because of a cold-blooded ambush in broad daylight,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a news release. “This was a capital murder, and the appropriate sentence is life in prison without parole.”

Harris County Assistant District Attorney Christopher Condon called it an orchestrated hit.

“The jury did the right thing in handing down a conviction for capital murder,” Condon said.

Hawkins was free on bond for the 2016 capital murder of John Pye at the time of the killing of the boy and his stepfather, officials said. On the day of the murder, Hawkins’ GPS monitor showed he had been walking around Solomon’s driveway, waiting for him to come home, prosecutors said. Hawkins had cut a hole in a chain-link fence and waited at least three hours for Solomon to come home, authorities said.

As Solomon backed into his driveway with his stepson in the passenger seat at about 4:30 p.m. that day, Hawkins emerged from the hole in the fence, shot the boy twice and shot Solomon four times.

Along with the GPS monitoring records, surveillance video from nearby cameras showed Hawkins running toward the murder scene, wearing the ankle monitor.

Why Hawkins targeted Solomon is unclear, prosecutors said. KTRK reported Solomon was a YouTube rapper with the handle “Montana22.”