A woman was shot in the leg just before 5 p.m. Saturday as she stepped off a METRO bus near Hillcroft Avenue and Dashwood Drive in southwest Houston, and the two suspects who allegedly opened fire with a pellet or BB gun are still on the run. METRO Police say she did not know either suspect, and no one involved — victim or suspects — had been identified as of the latest update.
Victim Taken to Hospital, Suspects Flee on Foot
The woman was getting off the bus when she was struck, according to FOX 26 Houston, which reported the shooting happened near the Hillcroft and Dashwood intersection. She was taken to a hospital, and her injuries are described as not life-threatening. After the gun went off, two males got off the bus and disappeared before officers arrived.
Police described the pair as Black males, possibly minors, dressed in all black. One has dreadlocks; the other has a short haircut, per the station's report. METRO Police are investigating the scene, and the weapon used — either a pellet gun or a BB gun — has not been more precisely identified.
A Pattern of Transit Violence Houston Has Been Grappling With
The shooting lands amid a messy, sometimes contradictory picture of safety on Houston's transit system. METRO Police Chief Ban Tien told the outlet, “We can't control everything but how we respond and handle the bad guys, those responsible. That's critical,” after noting that assaults reported by METRO were on the rise in 2025. Tien pointed to at least 11 violent incidents — including fatal shootings and a stabbing — on buses, bus stops and rail platforms since May of the prior year, the same report notes.
Other METRO figures tell a different story. According to ABC13, Tien has also said type A and B crimes declined in fiscal year 2026, with November and December marking the first months since the previous January to fall below the department's benchmark of 132 incidents a month. The agency's law-enforcement partnership is expanding beyond the rail system in 2026 to add uniformed officers on platforms, buses and at transit centers, the station reported.
Years of Mixed Numbers on Bus and Rail Safety
Longer-term data compiled by the Houston Chronicle shows 363 assaults reported to METRO in fiscal year 2023, up from 291 the year before, with light-rail platform assaults climbing from 71 in 2020 to 121 in 2023. Assaults on trains, by contrast, fell to just five in 2023 and three in 2022, down sharply from 39 in 2020 — a reminder that METRO's roughly 60 million annual riders at the time experienced such incidents only rarely.
A separate review by KHOU found that METRO's major-crime reports have steadily declined over the past three years, though the agency's website did not publish 2025 numbers, and the most recent available data put the crime rate at one major crime for every 193,000 rides. METRO has also reported that crime against people was down about 20% year over year as ridership rose, according to Click2Houston, which noted the agency responded to 34 assaults in December alone and recorded 517 major crimes against 76.3 million boardings in the year ending September 2025 — compared with 473 major crimes the year before, when ridership totaled 73.3 million.
Deadly Incidents Have Pushed METRO to Add Security
The backdrop includes tragedies far more severe than Saturday's shooting. A passenger named Lasalle Whitfield died after being stabbed five times during a fight aboard a METRO Red Line train in January 2024, per the Chronicle. More recently, a woman was shot and killed on a METRO bus in west Houston after a man opened fire at another person nearby — police said she was an innocent bystander, KHOU reported, and the suspect, described only as 17 to 20 years old, about 6 feet tall and wearing a black hoodie and light gray shorts, had not been caught as of 8 p.m. that night.
Another shooting aboard a METRO bus near Richmond Avenue and Beltway 8 left a woman dead and a teenager injured, according to Chron.com, which reported that METRO responded with expanded uniformed police patrols, more contracted security officers and additional technology as ridership climbed. The agency has also moved to add more than 100 security personnel and expand fare enforcement during peak travel hours, the outlet noted, while increasing unarmed guards at transit centers from 80 to 120 ahead of the World Cup and proposing a three-year, $49 million contract to expand that security presence, per Click2Houston.
Transit violence involving projectile weapons isn't unique to Houston. In Winnipeg, a teen allegedly shot a transit driver in the hand with a pellet gun last October, according to CityNews Winnipeg, leaving the driver with minor injuries in what police said was the second such assault on a bus driver within a couple of weeks. In Houston, METRO Police continue to investigate Saturday's shooting, and no suspects have been named.
