On January 4, 1998, Christopher Thomas, a 34-year-old Black male, was shot and killed in Houston, Texas. Thomas was sitting in his car outside his residence listening to music when Franklin DeWayne Alix, a 22-year-old Black male, approached, robbed him and shot him in the head. Thomas’s body was left on the ground outside the vehicle.

Alix had been carrying out a months-long violent crime spree in Houston that targeted people in apartment complex parking lots and included robberies, kidnappings, sexual assaults and other murders. He was arrested on January 6, 1998, and confessed to multiple crimes; he led authorities to a murder weapon later linked by ballistics to the shootings, and he admitted to killing Eric Bridgeford and Christopher Thomas.

Christopher Thomas’s death was a traumatic loss for his family and the community.