A gas-station shootout in Houston took an unexpected turn after a woman trying to flee the scene hit and killed a man who was allegedly trying to rob someone else, according to local police.
On Thursday afternoon, a man approached someone at a Chevron gas station who was selling hair extensions and tried to rob him, according to news station KTRK. The man selling extensions grabbed his gun and a shootout started.
"The suspect ran through the parking lot. There was a female that was in her car, and I believe she had a child in the car," Houston Police Department Lieutenant Larry Crowson told KTRK. "She was extremely scared. She accelerated at a high rate of speed to get out of the parking lot and avoid the shootout. She struck the suspect, and he's under the car here behind me."
The suspect died at the scene.
A Houston Police Department spokesperson told news station KHOU that the woman was in line for the McDonald's drive-thru when the shooting occurred. The spokesperson added that the woman isn't facing charges, calling the incident "completely accidental."
"She was extremely upset and scared about what happened. She was just trying to protect herself and her kids like anybody would," the spokesperson said.
Newsweek has reached out to the Houston Police Department for more information about the incident.
In a separate incident in Michigan last month, an argument at a gas station led to violence, with a woman crashing her vehicle into another car with a baby in the backseat. In a video of the incident, two women can be seen fighting before one woman gets into her car and crashes it into the other woman's SUV. The woman later faced charges including malicious destruction of property and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon.
In Washington state in February, police were investigating after witnesses said a pedestrian at a Jack in the Box drive-thru was struck by a vehicle. "Several people called in and advised this appeared to be intentional as the man was run over several times," the Pierce County Sheriff's Department wrote in a description of the incident at the time.
In Florida in March, police accused a man of running over his girlfriend and the woman's two daughters at a gas station after an argument that day.
