Deputies say it started around closing time at 2am at a sports grill on Highway 249 and Hollister.
The victim has been identified by his mother as 23-year-old Dominique Johnson. He spent time in the military and served in Iraq, according to his family.
"My neighbor knocked on my door and said he had gotten shot," said the victim's mother Candi Johnson.
She says when she ran outside her home she saw her son, a former Army soldier, unconscious in his girlfriend's car.
"When they brought him here his eyes were rolling back already," she said. "I don't know. I tried CPR, that's all I can tell you and I heard his lungs fill with air."
Harris County Sheriff's deputies say shortly before, Johnson and a group of friends were inside the bar celebrating a birthday when a fight broke out. Investigators say Johnson was not involved in the altercation but witnesses say he was laughing and that apparently angered the suspect.
"At closing time out in the parking lot, there was a fight disturbance, followed by four to six gunshots," Sgt. Ben Beall with the Harris County Sheriff's Office said. "The victim was shot once."
Critically wounded, Johnson's friends put him in a car and drove him to his mother's house.
"The people who brought him here panicked. They didn't know their directions to take him to the hospital," Johnson said. "My child wasn't perfect but he didn't deserve nothing like this. These kids don't know what they're doing to themselves. They are dying for nothing. I sent him to the military because I said I'd rather he die for his country than to die for nothing out here in these streets, and he still died out here in these streets, for nothing."
Johnson's brother, an Army sergeant at Fort Hood, arrived home Tuesday morning.
Investigators say they don't have any suspects at this time. They are hoping surveillance video will help lead to an arrest.
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