LePaul Warren

LePaul Warren Jr. was a 17 year old senior at Westbury High School in southwest Houston, Texas, where he was known as a versatile student athlete. He played defensive back and wide receiver on the football team and point guard on the basketball team, and by all accounts he was a well liked, energetic presence in the Westbury community, the kind of teenager described by teachers and classmates as someone who made people laugh and had a promising future ahead of him.

Warren mattered to the people around him not for public achievements but for the ordinary, particular things that make a life recognisable to those who lived alongside it: his place on two varsity teams, his role as a senior looked up to by younger students, and his presence at a school that was preparing, in the days before his death, for its homecoming game and pep rally against Northbrook High School.

Warren was fatally shot on the morning of Friday, September 25, 2026, on Dryad Street next to the Westbury High School campus, shortly before the school day began. Houston ISD security and a staff member reached him and attempted lifesaving measures before paramedics arrived, but he did not survive. His family, including his aunt Latasha Warren and his uncle Darwin Prater, confirmed his identity to reporters that same day, describing him as a good kid who did not deserve what happened to him.

The shooting set off a large police response, with Houston police and roughly 25 Texas Department of Public Safety troopers searching the surrounding apartment buildings and wooded areas for a suspect while Westbury High School was placed in secure mode as a precaution. Houston Police Chief Noe Diaz said the campus itself was never in danger and that all students and staff remained safe inside the building, though students described a frightening morning of lockdown style sheltering before a controlled release let parents pick up their children.

On the evening of September 26, 2026, police arrested a 17 year old identified in court records as Travoris Jarrell Hines, who was not enrolled in any Houston ISD school, and charged him with murder and unlawfully carrying a handgun. Investigators said Hines told them he had been carrying a gun because he believed someone was trying to harm him, and that he heard his name called before he opened fire. Police said Warren and Hines may have known each other, possibly through social media, but a motive has not been publicly confirmed.

Westbury High School canceled its homecoming game and all after school activities in the wake of the shooting, and Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles said the district was heartbroken by the loss. A memorial of balloons, candles, flowers, a football and a basketball grew outside the school in the days that followed, and crisis counselors remained available to students and staff as classes resumed on September 28, 2026.