Suspect in ding, dong, ditch murder shot at boys running from his house. What we know Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAYSeptember 3, 2025 at 11:00 PM 0 A deadly shooting that claimed the life of an 11yearold boy over the weekend started out as seemingly harmless fun between two young cousins who got bored ...
- - Suspect in ding, dong, ditch murder shot at boys running from his house. What we know
Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAYSeptember 3, 2025 at 11:00 PM
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A deadly shooting that claimed the life of an 11-year-old boy over the weekend started out as seemingly harmless fun between two young cousins who got bored at a family birthday party.
The night of Aug. 30 ended in tragedy when Julian Guzman was shot by 42-year-old Gonzalo Leon Jr. after ding, dong, ditching at the man's house in Houston. Guzman died on Aug. 31 and Leon was arrested and charged with his murder, the latest in a string of violent and sometimes deadly reactions to childlike pranks.
The boys were running away from Leon's house when he fired at them just before 11 p.m., according to a witness statement given by the victim's cousin revealed in a criminal complaint.
"And unfortunately, sadly enough, one of the boys who was 11 years old was shot in the back," Houston Police Department Sgt. Michael Cass told reporters.
New details in the case were revealed in court records obtained by USA TODAY, showing Leon fired more than once after the fleeing pair of boys had knocked on his door multiple times. Here's what we know.
Cousins were playing ding, dong, ditch
The victim's cousin told investigators that the two were attending a family birthday party about a block away from the scene of the shooting, according to a criminal complaint filed in Harris County court. The cousins "grew bored" and decided to venture off on their own to play the classic children's prank of ringing doorbells or knocking on doors and running away before the home occupants get to the door.
They knocked on the door of a blue house, later identified as Leon's house, several times and ran away, the cousin said, according to the complaint. The last time they pulled the prank on the house, the cousin said they saw a man dressed in all black emerge from a side gate, holding a pistol. The man shot the pistol into the ground, the cousin said.
As the boys ran away down the street, the man raised the pistol again and fired at them, striking Guzman in the back. Guzman fell to the ground and cried out, his cousin told investigators. The cousin tried to drag Guzman away, and saw the shooter walk back inside the house.
Guzman died later in the hospital, authorities said.
Suspect had trove of weapons
Authorities conducted a search of the home where Leon lives and recovered about 20 firearms, including a handful of AR-style rifles, shotguns and medium-caliber pistols, according to the criminal complaint.
Leon's wife told authorities that she and their toddler daughter were also inside the house at the time of the shooting, according to the complaint.
When he was taken into custody, Leon did not provide a statement to police and asked for a lawyer. (Court records did not list an attorney who could comment on Leon's behalf as of Sept. 3.)
Gonzalo Leon Jr., 42, charged with murder in the shooting of an 11-year old boy who played a doorbell prank, appears in a police booking photo in Houston, Texas, obtained on Sept. 2, 2025.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told Fox 26 Houston that charges may be upgraded to capital murder, which comes into play when aggravating factors are present in the case. USA TODAY has reached out to Teare's office.
"This was someone brutally murdering an 11-year-old simply because they were mad," Teare said, according to Fox 26. "We have a little boy who didn't even have a chance to get his life going yet, struck down for nothing."
Doorbell pranks turn deadly
This is not the first instance of a ding, dong, ditch prank ending in a shooting. There have been at least two other shootings this year tied to a TikTok social media trend in which participants ding, dong, ditch.
Earlier in August, a Texas man was arrested for aggravated assault after police said he fired multiple times at a vehicle with three teenagers inside who admitted to doorbell pranking at the man's house in late July.
A Virginia 18-year-old was shot and killed in May and a homeowner charged with crimes, including second-degree murder. Another teen was injured in the shooting.
A California man was convicted of murder charges stemming from a 2020 doorbell prank-gone-wrong. Anurag Chandra rammed his car into a vehicle of six teenagers, killing three 16-year-olds, after they played a similar prank. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Contributing: N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What happened in ding, dong, ditch shooting that killed 11-year-old
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