Two Texas Cheerleaders Shot After One Mistakenly Opened Door To The Wrong Vehicle

Two Texas Cheerleaders Shot After One Mistakenly Opened Door To The Wrong Vehicle At A Supermarket Parking Lot

Two teenage cheerleaders were shot after one said she mistook the suspect’s vehicle for her own in a supermarket parking lot near Texas’ capital — making this at least the third incident this week in which young people who’d made an apparent mistake were met with gunfire.

Authorities arrested Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, the man they say shot the two teens. He was taken into custody early Tuesday, the Elgin Police Department said in a news release later that morning.

Officers responding just after midnight Tuesday to an H-E-B supermarket parking lot found two people in a vehicle who’d been struck by bullets, police said, citing preliminary reports. One with serious injuries was rushed by helicopter to a hospital and was in critical condition, while the other was treated at the scene, the release said.

 

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The latter girl had gotten out of a friend’s car and opened the door to a vehicle she thought was hers, only to find a man sitting in the passenger seat, she said during a livestreamed prayer vigil Tuesday night at her cheer team’s gym, CNN affiliate KTRK reported.

Heather Roth said she was trying to apologize to the man when he got out of the passenger door.

“He just threw his hands up, and then he pulled out a gun and he just started shooting at all of us,” Roth said, fighting tears.

Roth was struck by a bullet but was treated and released at the scene, Lynne Shearer, managing partner of the Woodlands Elite cheer program, told CNN. The second cheerleader, Payton Washington, was shot twice and badly injured, according to a GoFundMe spearheaded by her cheerleading company, Woodlands Elite Generals. Washington is stable and recovering in the ICU, according to the cheerleading company.