A man and woman were found dead after a fatal shooting incident at the lobby of Marriott Marquis Houston Hotel in downtown Houston on Tuesday.
Police said that they dispatched officers to the hotel in downtown Houston after receiving reports of a shooting. Houston police chief Troy Finner said that the witnesses to the incident said that the man and the woman arrived at the hotel in separate vehicles. They met inside the lobby of the hotel and after talking with each other for some time, the man who appeared to be in his 30s shot the woman who looked like she was in her 20s.
Authorities said that after the man, after killing the woman, turned the gun and shot himself to death, Click 2 Houston reported.
The investigators in charge of the case said that they cannot determine the relationship between the man and the woman at this time. The video surveillance at the hotel and statements from some of the witnesses proved that the two seemed to know each other.
Police did not reveal the identities of the man and woman.
Some of the witnesses on the scene shared some insights about what happened at the hotel lobby. Melina Jara and Peter Maher, two of the hotel’s guests from Virginia shared that they were visiting the hotel’s gift shop when they heard the commotion.
According to Jara, she heard that there’s an active shooter in the lobby before she saw one of the hotel’s employees run into the gift shop.
“Five seconds later, we see this employee run into the gift shop. She starts locking the door. ‘We have to hide. We have to hide. There’s like an active shooter in the lobby.’ So we had to hide in the storage closet.”
Chuck Anderson, another witness, said he was at Starbucks when he heard the gunshots.
“All you heard was ‘Pow!’ And then the hotel manager came out,” he shared.
Kayla McCadney, from downtown Houston, said that she was spending the Labor Day weekend at the pool at the hotel. She also shared that she was shocked to witness the shooting while taking her daily walk around Discovery Green.
“To see this today, on my normal walk, when I’m kind of trying to get back on my routine from my normal weekend, it’s really shocking,” she said.
