Texas | Man sentenced to death in 2021 triple killing of Houston family

32-year-old Xavier Davis, a man accused in the 2021 slaying of a Houston family of three, was sentenced to death following a nearly four-week long trial in the case.

Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office had long sought the death penalty against the man accused of shooting and killing 35-year-old Gregory Carhee, 29-year-old Donyavia Lagway and their daughter, 6-year-old Harmony Carhee, at their apartment in southwest Houston on June 30, 2021.

Just minutes into a jury trial to determine Davis’s role in the 2021 slaying of the Houston family, he pleaded guilty to capital murder charges ahead of opening statements in the case, March 24.

During opening statements, attorneys for Davis said his guilt is no longer in question after his early plea, and that jurors should decide if his crimes and his background are worthy of Texas’s death penalty. On Thursday, a jury delivered the state’s harshest penalty to Davis.

Defense attorneys for Davis recounted the man’s abusive childhood at the hands of his mother in opening and closing trial arguments. Prosecutors’ arguments pressed on his quick admission of guilt and at times brought up his alleged unruly behavior and disciplinary actions in the Harris County Jail.

He declined to testify during closing arguments Wednesday. Prosecutors called his behavior through the course of the trial and months earlier a facade, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Davis, dressed in black, entered the family's apartment wielding a silver Smith & Wesson revolver, Chandler Raine, a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office said during opening statements. Davis first shot Gregory Carhee in the head as the family stood in the living room, then Lagway, and then Harmony Carhee while other children watched from the couch. Davis then directed the weapon at 10-year-old Lyric and fired a round, injuring the child.

"By some mercy, the bullet that Xavier Davis shot at her was stopped by the bone in her forearm," Raine said at the time. "The force still knocked her to the ground and that's where she stayed while he took the money and he left."

Following an anonymous tip, police discovered Davis, the firearm and bullets that were recovered from the scene at his girlfriend's apartment on West Fuqua Street days after the shooting.

Alexus Williams, a woman authorities suspect of having a relationship with Lagway, is accused of hatching a plan to kill the family and hiring Davis for an unknown amount of money to commit the killings. Officials say Williams may have lived in the apartment with Lagway for a period of time. She is also facing three capital murder charges in the case.

Serving as a prosecutor at the time, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare in 2022 said that the death penalty is reserved for the "worst of the worst," and Davis fit the bill.

Source: houstonpublicmedia, Sarah Grunau, April 18, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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