Teenage girlfriend may be linked to northeast Harris County homicide

A 20-year-old man was shot to death in northeast Harris County after a late-night argument on Woodland Hills Drive, and investigators later charged his 17-year-old girlfriend with murder.

Harris County sheriff’s deputies were called around 9 p.m. Thursday to the 14800 block of Woodland Hills Drive near Beltway 8 and North Sam Houston Parkway East in the Humble area. Witnesses said they heard a man and a woman arguing before gunshots rang out, then saw a dark-colored vehicle leave the area.

As deputies worked the scene, a 17-year-old girl returned in a dark vehicle and told investigators she was present when the victim was shot. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said the girl and the victim were in a dating relationship, and neither lived at the apartment complex where the shooting happened.

Detectives initially said no firearm had been recovered, and they still did not know how many shots were fired. Deputies also said it was too early to determine whether the shooting might have been self-defense, leaving investigators to sort through witness accounts, surveillance video and the timeline of the confrontation.

By the next day, 17-year-old Jazlyn Easter had been charged with murder in the death of 20-year-old Marcus Harris. Investigators said the case stemmed from an argument over alleged infidelity. Court records allegedly showed Easter recording a video while waving a handgun inside her car, and surveillance footage allegedly showed Harris getting out of Easter’s car, walking around it and approaching the driver’s side door before he was shot.

The killing has hit a nerve in a county where relationship violence remains a major public safety concern. Harris County Sheriff’s Office says it serves more than 4.1 million residents across 1,788 square miles and 41 incorporated municipalities, and even one homicide can reverberate through apartment complexes, nearby neighborhoods and the drivers who use Beltway 8 every day.

The broader numbers are grim. The Texas Council on Family Violence reported 205 Texans were victims of intimate partner or stalking homicide in 2023, the second-highest total in the last decade. Harris County has also seen a rise in domestic-violence-related homicides, a pattern that makes cases like this one especially troubling for residents trying to understand whether violence is random or rooted in personal conflict.

Harris’ family is now left with a young child and a father who will not return home. His mother said he was a single father, and his son turned 2 years old on Saturday, deepening the loss behind a case that began as a shooting call and quickly became a homicide investigation with lasting consequences for northeast Harris County.