Man sentenced to life without parole for Sunnyside-area murder

A Houston man was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday for the fatal shooting of a woman who refused to give him her cell phone during a robbery.

 

“This was a cold and calculated murder that happened because this man decided he wanted to use a gun to rob and steal,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. “He made a choice to try to take someone else’s property, and when it did not go as planned, he reverted to deadly violence.”

 

Dondrick Flagg, 31, was automatically sentenced after being convicted of capital murder by a Harris County jury in the slaying of Tiffany McKnight, a 29-year-old mother, at approximately 9 p.m. on April 21, 2018 in southwest Houston.

 

During the week-long trial, jurors heard that the confrontation began as McKnight was sitting in her car outside of her townhouse in the 2500 block of Reed, when Flagg approached her. She was talking to her sister on the phone and had just been to the store to pick up spaghetti noodles to make with her mother and son.

 

Flagg asked to use her phone.  When she refused, he pulled her from her car and shot her. Four shell casings were found at the scene.

 

Assistant District Attorney Ryan Trask, who handled the case with fellow prosecutor Aaron Von Quintus, said Flagg tried to take her phone and purse.

 

After the shooting, he took McKnight’s keys and fled the scene. Witnesses saw what he was wearing. Houston Police set up a perimeter and quickly arrested him nearby.

 

Police were able to recover the gun which Flagg ditched when he fled. Around his neck, Flagg was wearing the lanyard with McKnight’s keys, and it also had a small plastic framed photo of McKnight and her boyfriend.

 

“He targeted a woman who was sitting by herself in her car,” Trask said. “She was a kind person, a nice mother, just doing the same thing she had done a thousand times before.”