HOUSTON -- The man who opened fire on two Houston police officers Saturday was wanted in San Francisco for a Halloween shooting that left a 3-year-old girl and two others wounded.
The 3-year-old was trick-or-treating with her grandfather last Oct. 31, when Jesse Brown allegedly shot her three times. The grandfather was wounded while trying to shield the child from the bullets.
The suspected target of the shooting was also struck.
HPD Officer Fernando Meza was trying to question Brown at the downtown Houston bus station after a screener spotted a gun in his bag.
Officer Meza, a two-year veteran of the force, followed Brown outside, demanded his bag, then used a Taser in a failed effort to subdue him, HPD spokesman John Cannon said. Instead, Brown opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun, wounding Meza in the hand.
Brown darted across the street to a McDonald’s restaurant where he encountered Officer Timothy Moore, who was responding to a report of an officer in distress. His first gun was empty so Brown pulled another gun from his bag and fired at the 12-year police force veteran, wounding him in the leg, Cannon said.
Witnesses say they saw Brown apparently bleeding from a wound to his side as he fled two blocks to the Amegy Bank parking garage, beside Interstate 45, and exchanged gunfire with arriving SWAT officers as he darted inside, Cannon said.
Police said four officers exchanged shots with Brown before it was over.
Police closed the interstate and SWAT officers searched and cleared each level of the multilevel garage. Officers found Brown dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at 7:05 p.m., police said.
Brown used a gun stolen in a Houston burglary last November to shoot himself, according to police. It's not clear how long he had been in Houston.
The freeway was reopened and Brown’s body taken to the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office for an autopsy.
"There were 80 to 100 patrons in the bus station waiting room or waiting to board their buses just outside," Cannon said, adding that it was nearly miraculous that no one else was injured and that neither police officer’s wound appeared to be life-threatening. "That’s why Officer Meza waited until the man was outside."
Brown had a bus ticket to Marieta, Georgia where he has family, according to police. They believe he knew that he was wanted for the San Francisco shootings and that's why he was on the run again.
