Erica Grieder: Senseless death of 9-year-old Arlene Álvarez should galvanize change

Houston attorney Rick Ramos expects he’ll be thinking about Arlene Álvarez and her family for a long time. “All cases are different, and you’re always a professional, but some make you reflect more than others,” said Ramos, who became the family’s attorney after the 9-year-old was shot and killed Feb. 14. “Any time a child gets killed in the fashion that Arlene died…” It was Friday morning, and Arlene’s family was preparing to lay their little girl to rest at Grace Church Houston. It’s a large, loving family that includes parents, brothers, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with many other relatives and friends who have been left in mourning. In anger, too.

“It is not just us,” said Armando Álvarez, Arlene’s father, at a march Monday night, calling for an end to gun violence against Houston’s children. He’s right. Children being shot, even killed, by mistake happens with alarming frequency. Nine-year-old Ashanti Grant, for example, remains in the hospital after being shot in the head during a Feb. 8 road rage incident along Southwest Freeway. Her grandmother, Elaine Grant-Williams, was among the Houstonians who joined the march in support of the Alvarez family. In 2021, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, his office responded to hundreds of scenes at which juveniles had been shot. He said that after the Feb. 3rd shooting of 11-year-old Darius “DJ” Dugas, and he was, at the time, hoping that this year would be different. Will it? That’s up to us, ultimately. While it may not be clear what to do, in the wake of Arlene Álvarez’s death, such a cruelly senseless tragedy does point to the need to change.