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Mother upset over daughter being shot during traffic stop

Passenger arrested after bailing from car

By Eric James

(8/14/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) - A teenager is spending her 18th birthday in the hospital. She was shot early this morning by a Houston police officer.

It all happened outside an apartment complex on North Wayside in northeast Houston. The suspect's mother in this case believes that her daughter and her male passenger who was in the car with her were racially profiled.

Britney King's mother says her daughter went out last night to celebrate her eighteenth birthday, which is today, and also the start of college. King was supposed to start taking her first college class this morning.

It was around 1am when police started following King. Her male passenger in the car allegedly threw something out the window. Police didn't know what it was and started following King. Officers said they were trying to following her and were trying to get her to pull over for a routine traffic stop.

King turned into an apartment complex instead. The male passenger got out and ran into the apartment complex. One officer tackled and arrested him.

The other officer was yelling commands at King to get out of the car and put her hands up so he could see them. That's when the officer said she made a very odd gesture.

"She was making a lot of erratic movements inside the vehicle," said Sgt. Michelle Sandoval with the Houston Police Department. "He was unsure of what she was trying to do. Again, he kept giving her verbal commands and at that time, her door flew open and he saw something shiny in her hands."

"Have you ever known her to own a weapon?" we asked.

"I don't even own a weapon," said King's mother, Mercedes Lee. "The only weapon we have is the word of God and that is the weapon that we use in our house and that is it."

King's mother says that the reason Britney was probably fumbling in the car is because in order to open the car door, she had to unlatch her seatbelt. Her mother believes the shiny object the officer says he saw was the bracelets that she had on last night when she left home.

Police have not commented on whether or not they found a weapon in the car. They are still looking for the object seen thrown from the moving vehicle.

King was taken to Ben Taub Hospital for a gunshot wound to her hand.