Teen and boyfriend kill grandma after fight about staying home from school, TX cops say
A teenage girl and her boyfriend are accused of killing her grandmother, then stealing her cash and guns and going on the run, Texas police say and news outlets report.
The woman’s 17-year-old granddaughter, Tara King, and 18-year-old Uriah Urick Jr., are charged with murder, according to court records filed Feb. 11 in Galveston County.
Tammy King was found dead — with signs of foul play — inside her home in Bacliff the morning of Thursday, Feb. 6, the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Bacliff is a roughly 35-mile drive southeast from Houston.
King’s granddaughter, Tara, and her boyfriend, Uriah, were quickly identified as persons of interest, and a search was launched to find them.
No attorney information was available for Tara or Uriah.
Investigators say King was killed Feb. 5 but wasn’t found until the next day, when her boyfriend, who was worried because he hadn’t been able to get in touch with her, forced his way into the home, according to court records obtained by KHOU.
The house was “ransacked,” with gun safes emptied and money missing, the man told deputies, the station reported. He found King in her bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head, investigators said.
The man said Tara and Uriah had been at King’s home on Feb. 5, and that she and Tara had been fighting because she wanted to stay home from school, the station reported.
After the killing, Tara and Uriah fled 340-miles southwest from Bacliff to Laredo, near the U.S.-Mexico border, the sheriff’s office said.
The couple was captured in Laredo on Feb. 9 “following an intensive investigation and a multi-jurisdictional manhunt,” according to the sheriff.
According to investigators, Uriah and Tara reached out to multiple people through social media and other means in order to get rides from one place to the next, offering money to anyone who would take them, KRIV reported.
One individual told police Tara messaged him on Instagram asking if he could drive her and Uriah to Wyoming for $300, the station reported. She also said her boyfriend “has guns that are really sentimental to him” and asked if he could bring those along.
Another person said the couple paid $500 to stay with him, then offered another $1,000 for a ride to an unspecified northern state, investigators said, according to the outlet. Tara and Uriah cut and dyed their hair after arriving at his home, he told investigators.
This story was originally published February 11, 2025 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Teen and boyfriend kill grandma after fight about staying home from school, TX cops say."