The undercover Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy behind the shooting death of Joshua Johnson — who died in April down the street from his parents’ Missouri City home — has been identified as Tu Tran, a 12-year veteran of the agency.
U.S. Rep. Al Green on Wednesday identified Tran as the law enforcement officer — a member of the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force — who on April 22 fatally shot the 35-year-old Johnson while working a pre-dawn operation in the Fondren Park neighborhood.
A deputy named Tu Tran was no-billed in March 2016 for a shooting investigation involving the death of Juan Ibarra, according to court records. In that incident, the deputy shot and killed the 24-year-old man outside a Houston night club in July 2015 while he and three other deputies were working an off-duty security job.
Tran’s name was disclosed during a nearly two-hour meeting with Green, Johnson’s parents Richard and Wilhelmena Beary, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and an investigator familiar with the details of the April 22 death. The congressman said the deputy’s complaint history was not provided. Few details that were not already publicly known were revealed, Green continued.
After the meeting, Gonzalez left through a separate door to avoid a news conference held by the congressman and Johnson’s family. But he rolled down the car window to answer questions on the meeting, which the sheriff said he requested.
Gonzalez said the family deserves transparency and answers to any inconsistencies in the evidence. He said the forensic investigation into the shooting continues.
Johnson’s death happened down the street from where his parents live on East Ritter Circle. Police contend he approached Tran as the deputy sat in an unmarked vehicle parked under a street light, looking for a capital murder suspect from Mesquite. Johnson tapped on the deputy’s window around 6 a.m. with a BB gun in one hand and his phone with its light shining in the other.
Words were exchanged and the deputy asked Johnson, a Navy veteran, to lower his weapon.
He raised it instead, authorities said. The deputy fired twice, striking Johnson.
Neighbors have spent weeks questioning how Johnson came to be shot while housesitting for a neighbor, who was hospitalized.
A bullet hole found in a neighbor’s garage door — out of sight from where the shooting is said to have happened — has garnered the most contention.
The sheriff’s investigator offered an explanation during the meeting how the bullet hole came to be there, but Green was not sold on the account.
“It does not conform with what we believe the case to be, given what we have seen and what we have been told,” Green said. “How could that bullet traverse that distance, given where it is said where the officer was and given the cars that were in the driveway? It boggles the mind as to how it could have occurred.”
The congressman said he would still like a rarely used court of inquiry to independently investigate the officer-involved shooting in addition to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office’s probe.
It is not yet known if Tran ever identified himself as a law enforcement officer.
The shooting happened within hours of another killing involving the Houston Police Department, the first of six in-custody deaths that would continue through late May.
Sheriff’s office spokesman Jason Spencer said last month that plainclothes deputies are not required to wear body cameras because “that would give them away.”
Gonzalez said it was still too early in the investigation to consider a change in body camera policy.
The sheriff’s office said Tran has spent the past four years on the task force.
The 2015 club shooting, according to the Houston Police Department, happened after Ibarra fired a gun into a “large crowd of people attempting to leave the parking lot.” Two deputies, including one named Tu Tran, ran toward Ibarra and told him to show his hands, authorities said.
Ibarra continued to fire the gun as he ran along the side of a truck and then turned toward the deputies, police said.
“One deputy, in fear of his life and for the safety of the people around him, discharged his duty weapon at least one time,” a news release stated.
Ibarra died at the scene.
In the aftermath, witnesses contradicted each other on what happened. KPRC-TV reported at the time that Ibarra at least fired the gun into the air while an unidentified woman who tried to save Ibarra after he was shot said he had “both hands on the truck” and was trying to leave.
“They shot at him,” she told a reporter. “What was the reason why?”
The deputy was later disciplined in 2017 after a television news helicopter crew witnessed him striking a handcuffed suspect in the throat after a 85-mile chase that ended in Jefferson County. A video of the incident shows Tran striking the suspect as he guided him into a police vehicle.
Tran was suspended without pay for three days, given 90 days probation and ordered to undergo additional training, KPRC-TV then reported, citing Senior Deputy Thomas Gilliland, a sheriff’s office spokesman.
nicole.hensley@chron.com
twitter.com/nkhensley
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Harris County deputy behind Joshua Johnson death identified - Houston Chronicle
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