A young Navasota man is facing charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, following the shooting of his friend Sunday afternoon, June 16th, near Richards. That’s when Grimes County Sheriff’s Investigator Kindale Pittman reports 17-year-old Raul Garcia called sheriff’s dispatch advising that his friend had been shot and that he was enroute with him to Huntsville Memorial Hospital.
Both Walker County Sheriff’s Deputies and DPS Troopers were then dispatched to the hospital parking lot where they contacted, and subsequently detained Garcia, while his 16-year-old companion was allowed to enter the facility for treatment.
After being read his rights, Garcia told deputies he and his friend had traded some marijuana for a couple of semi-automatic handguns in the Richards area, and then proceed to video themselves while riding around in his blue Chevy pick-up truck playing a prevalent social media game called, “You Lackin.”
The point of this game, Pittman says, is that one person points a gun at another, asking, “You lackin?” to which the other person then pulls another gun pointing back at the first and says, “No.”
According to Garcia, however, he inadvertently pulled his trigger as they went over a bump, discharging his weapon and striking his friend in the upper mouth just below the nose, with the bullet exiting his neck below his right ear. Garcia said they both initially laughed at the incident until they saw blood and began to panic.
Garcia was transported to and booked into the Grimes County Jail, from where he bonded out on a $3,000 bail two days later. If convicted of the second-degree felony, he could face up to 20 years behind bars and a $10,000 fine. Meanwhile, the condition of the injured, so-far unidentified, 16-year-old remains unknown.