The incident centered around the fatal shooting of 33-year-old Sherry Dawson at the 6400 Self Storage facility located at the 6400 block of Eastex Freeway in Houston. Officers from the Houston Police Department responded to a call at 10:15 a.m. on November 5, 2025, and found Dawson outside a storage unit suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to her head, neck, and arms; she was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m..
According to authorities and surveillance footage, the events unfolded quickly at the storage facility that morning. Dawson’s vehicle entered the property at 10:05:40 a.m., followed closely by a distinctive white Ford F-250 pickup truck.
Video showed the truck followed her through the gate before it could close, then both vehicles engaged in unusual maneuvering before a physical altercation occurred between Dawson and a man who got out of the truck. At 10:09:37 a.m., Dawson fell to the ground; the shooter then fled in the pickup truck, which was seen exiting the facility moments later.
Police investigators identified a clear motive connected to a failed high-stakes drug deal. Dawson’s common-law husband, who met police at the scene, admitted to acting as a middleman in drug trafficking. He stated he had introduced the suspect, 57-year-old Kip Stitts of Detroit, to a cocaine supplier.
When Stitts later told the middleman he planned to rob the supplier, the middleman and supplier instead conspired to steal from Stitts, taking his $125,000 payment without delivering any cocaine. The middleman told police he believed his wife was killed in retaliation for this theft, as he had heard Stitts was looking for him in the weeks prior.
The Houston Police Department, with evidence from surveillance video, witness accounts, and vehicle records, secured a murder charge against Kip Stitts. A key witness at the storage facility reported hearing gunshots and seeing a man with a mismatched black or dark gray front end on his white truck flee the scene, which matched the vehicle description. Further investigation traced that specific Ford F-250 truck, which had been recently purchased in Beaumont, Texas.
Crucially, digital evidence helped solidify the case against Stitts. Cellphone location data from Stitts’ number placed his device surveilling Dawson’s home before the shooting, at the storage facility at the time of the murder, and then traveling north out of Houston. The data indicated he was back in Detroit, Michigan, by the next evening. Phone records also showed calls from Stitts to an associate in Houston shortly after the shooting.
As of the latest reports, Kip Stitts has been formally charged with murder in Harris County, Texas, and a $1 million bond has been set. He has previous convictions for drug and assault charges. However, he has not been apprehended and his current whereabouts are unknown, with his last known location being in Michigan. The Houston Police Department’s investigation remains active as they work to locate and arrest the suspect.