A member of one of Houston’s most infamous street gangs, the 52 Hoover Crips, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for shooting a neighbor in 2020, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced.

“When a gang member shoots up a house, brutally murders a man and is so confident he will get away with murder that he brags about it, we see exactly how pervasive gun violence is in our community,” Ogg said. “We mourn for the victim’s family and thank the jury for ending this gang member’s reign of terror.”

 Robert E. Chenier
 Gould, Joan  

 

Robert E. Chenier, 32, was sentenced late Friday after being convicted by a Harris County jury of murder in the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Shaun Lewis near Houston’s Clinton Park neighborhood on Nov. 23, 2020.

Chenier and Lewis knew each other and had both grown up in the area. On the night of the murder, Chenier had a dispute with someone he knew and shot up a house in the 300 block of Cartersville Street after midnight.

Lewis, who was not connected to that shooting, and another man saw Chenier on the small semi-rural street. Chenier confronted them, apparently to rob them, and took a pistol from the other man.

As the other man ran away, Lewis put up his hands to give Chenier whatever he wanted. Chenier then shot him, wounding him. Lewis tried to run away but fell in a nearby field.

Chenier then approached him and, as Lewis begged for his life, shot him in the head, killing him. Chenier then took a photo of Lewis’s lifeless body.

After the murder, Chenier told several people what he had done, and investigators with the Houston Police Department quickly pieced together what happened and charged the habitual offender with murder.

Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Marshall, a chief in the DA’s Trial Bureau, prosecuted the four-day trial.

“This was a senseless and callous murder, and the defendant showed that he has no regard for human life,” Marshall said. “In fact, after the murder, he took a photo of his victim and showed it around the neighborhood like a trophy.”

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