HOUSTON — Court records revealed that Houston police used license plate reader cameras, surveillance video and cell phone information to identify one of the suspects in a deadly drive-by shooting in the River Oaks area on March 30.
Montrel Burley, 40, was identified by Houston police as one of the suspects involved in the shooting on Mid Lane. Darrell Gentry, a rapper known on social media as BTB Savage, was killed. Burley was booked into Harris County jail Tuesday morning.
Court records said that home surveillance videos captured the car the suspects were driving, a black Subaru, on Mid Lane at the time of the shooting. Houston Police Department investigators used license plate readers to track the vehicle, which was spotted near Westheimer and the West Loop and near Ridgeley and Wirt Road. Investigators also tracked the vehicle outside of Houston westbound on I-10 in Fayette County going toward San Antonio.
Investigators used Burley's phone records to track where he was the night of the shooting.
The motive, according to court records, revealed that Gentry was involved in the shooting death of a man in San Antonio during an attempted robbery. Investigators said it was justified and no charges were filed. The man who was killed in that incident in San Antonio was allegedly friends with and part of a gang with Burley.
Gentry's mother Bernita Ward told KHOU 11 that her son believed people wanted to retaliate against him after he talked about the San Antonio incident online.
"I said, 'What's going on? And he said, 'I think they're trying to set me up,'" Ward said. "No mother should ever feel this pain, no mother should have to bury her child."
Houston police are still looking for another suspect who has yet to be identified.