A 7-year-old boy who loved playing outdoors and riding on the back of his daddy’s Harley died Saturday morning after a Liberty County couple opened fire on him and three other alleged trespassers, Liberty County Sheriff’s Cpl. Hugh Bishop said.
“He was just a little country boy … who liked to kick off his shoes,” said Joseph Breland, a neighbor and close family friend.
Donald Coffey Jr., his father and friends were on their way back from joy riding near a levee and swimming in the Trinity River around 9 p.m. Thursday when homeowners Gale and Sheila Muhs fired at them with a 12-gauge shotgun, police say.
The Muhses, both 45, are charged with aggravated assault and are being held in the Liberty County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail each. The couple is expected to appear in state district court in the coming week.
Authorities are considering upgrading the charge to murder or capital murder, Bishop said.
The boy, struck in the face, was among eight people, including four children, who had been on the river outing. Four people, including another child, were shot.
The boy’s 5-year-old sister, Destiny, and their father, Donald Coffey Sr., 36, were hit but have been treated by doctors and released.
The fourth shooting victim is family friend Patrick Cammack, 30, whose condition has improved since surgery. Doctors had to leave a bullet in his head, said his wife, Cindy Nelton, who was also there that night.
Nelton said the ordeal happened over two or three minutes in “pitch darkness.”
She said she was driving a sport utility vehicle with the boy’s mother, Becky Coffey. Two of the women’s children, including Destiny, were in the back.
Driving alongside them in a Jeep were Cammack, the elder Coffey, “Little Donald” and Cammack’s son.
The men stopped to use the bathroom and got out of the Jeep near the Muhses’ home in the Westlake subdivision south of Dayton when a woman’s voice boomed through the darkness, Nelton said.
In a message peppered with expletives, she said, the voice ordered the group to get their vehicles off the property.
“And then I heard a shot and our windows were blown out,” Nelton said.
Nelton, who never saw a shooter, said she immediately stomped on the gas and screamed, “We’ve got kids in this vehicle! Y’all need to stop shooting!”
A second shot, and possibly others, came in reply.
‘There was blood all over’
Nelton said she sped to safety near a bridge, unaware of the Jeep’s location.
Becky Coffey opened the door to the SUV to go look for her husband and son. When the inside light came on, a bloodied Destiny was in the back seat screaming.
“She said, ‘Mama, they shot me. Mommy, they shot me.’ There was blood all over her,” Nelton said.
Nelton rushed the girl to a nearby fire station while Becky Coffey frantically searched on foot for her other family members. The victims were taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital via air ambulance.
Meanwhile, Sheila Muhs — whose home is fronted by a sign warning: “Trespassers will be shot. Survivers will be reshot!! Smile I will” — had called 911. Bishop said the woman told a dispatcher: “They’re running over our levee in big-wheel vehicles, and I shot them.” Officials have not released the 911 tape.
Nelton said justice, for her, is simple.
“They need to be dead,” she said of the Muhses.
On Saturday, authorities were trying to determine details, such as the visibility that night, distance between the victims and the shooters, and property lines in the rural area along the river.
“Little Donald” lived his entire life in the area, riding four-wheelers and running along the Trinity’s banks.
“You couldn’t ask for a better-spirited kid,” Breland, the neighbor, said.
cindy.horswell@chron.com
cindy.george@chron.com
