Harris County man charged after fatal domestic shooting, children hid inside home

A fight over Jose Arquimides Romero’s back pain ended in gunfire and left Yanira Nafin dead inside their Cloverleaf home, a rapid domestic escalation that investigators say unfolded shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday on Texarkana Street in east Harris County. Romero, 43, was arrested and booked into the Harris County Jail on a murder charge.

Yanira Nafin was 39. She was inside the home with Romero, her common-law husband, when the argument turned violent. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the dispute centered on Romero’s back pain and his belief that Nafin was not taking it seriously enough. During the confrontation, Romero allegedly shot Nafin in the 14200 block of Texarkana Street near Hollywood Street and the I-10 East and Freeport Street area.

Three children were in the house when the shooting started, a detail that makes the case especially chilling for anyone following family violence prosecutions. The children hid when the gunfire began and were not injured. Romero remained at the residence after the shooting and was taken into custody without incident, a stark end to a scene that investigators described as domestic violence inside a home that should have been a refuge.

The case now moves into the formal criminal process, with Romero facing a murder charge and a court appearance scheduled for the following Tuesday. Early reports also said officials at the scene believed Romero called 911 and admitted shooting his wife, adding another significant layer to a case that turned on seconds inside a small domestic setting.

The killing lands in a county already absorbing a heavy toll from intimate-partner violence. Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse says Harris County has received between 45,000 and 50,000 domestic-violence calls a year over the past three years. The Harris County Domestic Violence Assistance Fund report puts the number of law-enforcement calls at more than 40,000 a year, along with more than 70,000 hotline calls for help. Statewide, the Texas Council on Family Violence reported 161 Texans died from domestic violence in 2024, and Harris County led the state with 47 domestic-violence homicide victims. In the first eight months of 2025, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said its homicide unit handled 67 murders, 23 of them domestic-violence related.