HOUSTON – The victim's mother said her son was 17-year-old Anthony Pereira.
Police said Pereira was the passenger in a white van with his friend on the feeder of the Southwest Freeway near Westpark just after 6 p.m. Saturday when a gunman in a blue car shot at them and then drove away.
Pereira died inside the van. The driver was also shot and drove to where he crashed outside a store on Glenmont Drive.
Police and the victim's mother said people had been giving Pereira a hard time.
“They were threatening him for no reason... gang members,” said Pereira's mother.
“He said there were three males in his apartment, threatening to fight him, flashing gang signs and he wanted nothing to do with it so I guess he wanted an extra person to go with him to get a hair cut because he was afraid,” said HPD detective Christopher Elder.
The driver was in the hospital and was expected to be OK.
Investigators said they were going back to the place of the shooting to search for surveillance video.