A Terrible Loss

Dear Friends,

There was a murder in Houston on Saturday night. It was the sister of death row activist and a founder of PURE, Harvery Tee Earvin. Also murdered was his sister's god child.

His family will bury Savannah, as she was called, on this Saturday at 11am.

Please keep Tee in your thoughts. If you want to send a card, his address is:

Harvery Earvin #000577
Polunsky Unit
3872 FM 350 South, Livingdston, TX 77351

Or come by SHAPE tonight for our holiday card siging. We will have a sympathy card there that folks can sign.

This is the article from the Houston Chronicle. Tee's family doesn't know a motive or who did this yet.

Home invasion deaths trouble NE Houston residents
By ALLAN TURNER

First came gunshots in the night. Then came police sirens, popping
camera flashes, the investigators' hubbub and, finally, uneasy quiet as
the night's victims, Letha Perkins and her 13-year-old goddaughter were
trundled into a waiting ambulance and taken to the morgue.

By Sunday morning, only yellow tape surrounding the crime scene at 7528
Sandra remained. And by Monday, when Perkins' relatives arrived to
straighten the house, even that was gone.

All that remained in the wake of the Saturday homicides -- the area's
second and third in less than two weeks -- were puzzlement and fear.
Fear, residents said, has been an unwelcome guest in the northeast
Houston neighborhood ever since crack cocaine made its appearance.

"This used to be a safe neighborhood," Perkins' sister, Paulette Levan,
said Monday. "We all grew up here. My mother lived right on the corner.
Now it's changed."

On Nov. 25, she noted, robbers killed a clerk at a convenience store on
Crosstimbers less than a mile from the Perkins home. Police on Monday
said the killers of Onyemaobi Okorafor remained at large.


Suspicious people

Perkins, 51, a retired charter bus company employee, apparently shared
a sense of unease. Late on the Wednesday before her death, she
telephoned police to report suspicious people near her home. Later, she
told neighbors that strange men had knocked on her door shortly before
midnight. No arrests were made.

Perkins lived in a well-kept green frame house, easily the most lavish
residence in an otherwise modest neighborhood. The Perkins home is only
a block away from two churches.

About 11 p.m. on Saturday night, nearby resident Charlie Peters heard
the pop of gunshots.

He wasn't surprised.

"I didn't pay no attention," said Peters, a disabled Vietnam vet. "This
area is drug-infested. It happens all the time."

Another resident, Andrea Foots, was sleeping on a sofa in her front
room when she heard the gunshots.

Her immediate concern was for the safety of a daughter, who had chosen
precisely that moment to pull into the family driveway.

"I told her to get into the house right away. Someone was out there
with a gun," Foots recalled. "I woke up Sunday and there was crime
scene tape all over Ms. Perkins' house. I knew the shots were close,
but I didn't know they were that close."

Foots said she was only casually acqainted with Perkins, but she
befriended Perkins' goddaughter.

"She was a sweet little girl," Foots said, saying that the Key Middle
School student was a close friend of her daughter, Aaliyah. "She was a
member of the dance team, the Cougarettes."

Houston Independent School District officials confirmed that the slain
girl had attended Key Middle School. Counselors on Monday visited each
classroom and made themselves available for one-on-one consultations
with youngsters.

School and medical examiner's officials declined to identify the girl,
pending official confirmation of her name.

At Perkins' home Monday, family members clustered and talked. One woman
sat on the front porch steps, cradling her face in her hands.

"It's Christmastime," said Peters, who paused from his work on a
refrigerator to glance toward Perkins' kin standing in a knot in the
driveway. "Her family ought to be gathering for the holidays. But those
people, now they're going to be gathering for a funeral."