A man from Texas has been accused of murder for the murder of an Afghan father who spent years fighting next to the green beans of the United States in Afghanistan.
The suspect, Katia Trevon Bougere, 31, was accused of shooting Abdul Rahman Waziri, also 31 years old, in a parking dispute in Houston. But Bougere has not been arrested. Instead, he received a summons to appear before the court next week, as if it were a traffic violation.
It is the last strange turn in a case that has caused protests in Houston and has taken Green Berets to write letters to public officials who demand justice for his former fallen companion.
“This accusation is only the beginning of justice that the Waziri family deserves,” said his lawyer, Omar Khawaja.
“A husband and a father were killed meaningless, and although we are grateful that the Grand Jury returned a murder position, it is outrageous that the man accused of taking his life is allowed to appear in summons, not arrested, not handcuffed, not treated as the violent criminal who alleges that it is.”
When asked why prosecutors did not issue an arrest warrant, a spokeswoman for the Harris County District Prosecutor’s Office responded with a brief statement.
“After a grand jury accused the defendant, the employee’s office issued a summons and must appear before the court,” reads the statement.
The efforts to get to Bougere were not successful, and it was not clear immediately if he had hired a lawyer.
For five years, Waziri served in an elite unit in charge of helping to protect green berets in Afghanistan. He arrived in the United States in 2021 and settled in Houston with his wife and two young daughters, just to be shot dead outside his apartment complex, said Houston police.
The gunman spoke with the police officers at the scene, but was allowed to go without being accused, police said. Three months passed without updates of the officials responsible for enforcing the law. But on Monday, a grand jury of Houston returned an accusation that accuses Bougere with a serious crime, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
The accusation documents include a “citation request” that makes Bougere be presented in the Court at 9 am on Tuesday, August 5.
“It will not appear in the issuance of an arrest warrant,” he says.
David Kwok, associate professor at the Law Center of the University of Houston, said that state law allows prosecutors to request a summons instead of an arrest warrant even for people accused of murder and other violent crimes. But it was not clear why the Harris County District Prosecutor’s Office would make such a decision in this case.
“Certainly causes many questions,” he said.
Eddie Cortes, a veteran defense lawyer in Houston who has no connection with this case, said it is an unusual course of action, but that is generally reduced to whether the defendant has hired a lawyer known by prosecutors.
“They are not going to do this with someone who is just Joe Show of the street,” Cortes said. “But they will do it if the guy has advice, and he is a defense lawyer for a long time here in the city.”
Bougere comes from the Los Angeles area, according to online records, and competed in the high jump in Lynwood High School.
In 2020, he presented documents in Texas to launch a company called Black Kartier Militia LLC, according to state records. No other information was immediately available.
The fatal shooting took place on the night of April 27. Just before 9:10 PM, Waziri led to the parking lot of his apartment complex and left his Toyota Camry, according to the surveillance images provided to NBC News by the family lawyer.
A man stopped in a car behind his vehicle, which led to a confrontation that ended with Waziri lying on the floor, with multiple gunshot wounds.
The surveillance images did not capture the shooting or the moments in advance, but the other man was seen calmly away later.
Waziri was unarmed at that time, according to Khawaja, his family’s lawyer.
Houston police said in a statement that the officers who responded were approached to the scene by a man who identified himself as the shooter and said that he and Waziri were “discussing the parking lot.” The officers interviewed the man and took possession of his weapon, but then let him go.
The spokeswoman for the district prosecutor told NBC News in May that prosecutors were waiting for additional information from the investigators before deciding whether to present charges.
Abdullah Khan, Waziri’s brother, said he was “very happy” with the decision of the grand jury, but does not understand why he took so long when the suspect was accused.
“It’s really strange to me,” Khan said. “Why didn’t they do this yet with the evidence they had?”
