The case against Alexus Williams developed months after police arrested gunman Xavier Davis in the 2021 killing of three family members.
HOUSTON, Texas — The investigation began with three people dead inside a southwest Houston apartment and a wounded 10-year-old girl calling relatives for help. More than five years later, the second defendant tied to the killings has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Alexus Chenelle Williams, 33, pleaded guilty to three counts of murder in the deaths of Donyavia Lagway, 29, Gregory Carhee, 35, and their daughter Harmony Carhee, 6. Her sentence closes a prosecution that developed more slowly than the case against Xavier Davis, the man who admitted firing the shots. Davis was arrested the day after the June 30, 2021 attack and eventually sentenced to death. Williams was not charged until March 2022 as investigators assembled evidence that prosecutors said showed she had directed her childhood friend toward a family she knew personally.
The first police account contained no mention of Williams. Houston officers were dispatched to 12101 Fondren Road about 10:35 p.m. on June 30 after a shooting was reported. They found Lagway, Carhee and Harmony dead and the 10-year-old girl seriously wounded. A younger child inside the apartment was unharmed. According to relatives and later testimony, the wounded girl had remained still during the attack and contacted her grandmother once the gunman left. Another child in the family was away from the apartment. At that early stage, police publicly described the shooter only as a man in his 20s and began looking for evidence and witnesses.
Investigators identified Davis quickly. Houston police said he was taken into custody July 1 on an unrelated family violence charge and was subsequently accused of three counts of capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Later proceedings filled in details unavailable in the first hours. Police and prosecutors linked him to cash and other evidence, while trial testimony described a Jeep taken during an armed robbery before the killings. Prosecutors said Davis used the vehicle to reach the Fondren Road apartment and later burned it in a grassy area in Pearland. His rapid arrest answered who police believed had fired the shots, but it did not settle why that family had been targeted.
That question led detectives toward Williams. She had previously been in a relationship with Lagway and, according to prosecutors, knew the family’s home and circumstances. Authorities said the relationship ended badly shortly before the killings. Lagway had returned to Carhee, and reporting on the case said she had recently learned she was pregnant. Prosecutors learned that Williams and Davis had known each other since childhood, while Davis had no independent relationship with the family. That connection became central to the theory that the attack was not a random home invasion and that someone familiar with the victims had directed Davis to them.
Investigators did not immediately arrest Williams. Prosecutors later said police considered her a target early in the case but needed additional evidence to support charges. Communications between Williams and Davis became part of that effort. Reports said text messages helped establish their contact, and investigators also examined a video call linked to the time of the attack. Some court-based accounts said Williams watched the killings on FaceTime. Other later reporting said prosecutors believed she may have watched either the shootings or the aftermath. The consistent allegation was that Williams was in electronic contact with Davis around the crime and that those communications helped investigators connect the two.
The state also built a broader planning theory. Testimony later presented in Davis’ case said Williams drove with him before the killings as he obtained the vehicle prosecutors said was used in the attack. Prosecutors accused her of telling Davis where the family lived and of presenting the apartment as a place where money could be taken. Davis then entered the home and demanded money before shooting family members, according to trial testimony. That sequence allowed prosecutors to argue that Williams’ responsibility began before Davis reached the apartment, even though she never entered the home as the shooter.
Williams’ lawyers drew a sharp line between arranging a robbery and arranging murder. They denied that she had masterminded a plan to kill Lagway, Carhee and Harmony and said the evidence supported an intention to have Davis commit a robbery. Prosecutors took the opposite position, arguing that Williams had selected the family and set the fatal sequence in motion. The dispute was important because Williams originally faced three capital murder counts that could have sent her to prison for life without parole. It also explained why the evidence surrounding her communications and prior relationship with Lagway took on such importance as her case moved toward trial.
Meanwhile, prosecutors proceeded against Davis. He pleaded guilty to capital murder in March 2025 just as his trial was beginning, so jurors were asked to decide punishment rather than guilt. The proceeding lasted weeks and included testimony from the girl who survived the attack. She was 14 by then and described what she experienced at age 10. Prosecutors presented the killings as part of a deliberate course of conduct and asked for death. Defense lawyers presented evidence about Davis’ upbringing and urged jurors to impose a sentence that would spare his life. On April 17, 2025, the jury returned a death sentence.
Williams remained the unresolved part of the case for another year and a half. As her capital murder trial approached in September 2026, prosecutors offered to reduce the charges to murder in exchange for a 40-year sentence. Houston Chronicle reporting said she initially turned the agreement down, after which the state withdrew it. Court proceedings paused as lawyers continued talking. On Sept. 29, Williams accepted a nearly identical resolution. She pleaded guilty to three murder counts, and an aggravated assault charge tied to the wounded child was dismissed. The agreement eliminated the need for prosecutors to prove their original capital murder theory to a jury.
When relatives appeared for victim-impact statements Oct. 2, their comments returned the case to the people affected by the first frantic call for help in 2021. Family members described the effects on the surviving children and criticized the disparity between Davis’ death sentence and Williams’ 40-year term. Angela Ervin, an aunt of Lagway, said the children had struggled with the loss of their parents. Dominique Robins, Lagway’s cousin, told Williams she believed a harsher punishment would have been appropriate. Williams declined to make a statement before Judge Brian Warren imposed the sentence called for by the agreement.
The sentencing leaves the case with two guilty defendants but different punishments. Davis remains under a death sentence for physically carrying out the killings. Williams will serve a long prison term for murder after accepting responsibility through her guilty pleas, while continuing to avoid a trial on prosecutors’ broader claim that she deliberately ordered the deaths. She will be eligible for parole after 30 years, according to reporting on the agreement, though eligibility alone does not secure release.
For investigators, the final judgment against Williams completed a case that had unfolded in stages: an emergency response prompted by a surviving child, the rapid identification of the shooter, months of work connecting a second suspect to him, a death-penalty proceeding and finally a negotiated resolution for the person prosecutors said led Davis to the family. For the relatives, the legal endpoint arrived more than five years after Lagway, Carhee and Harmony were killed. The criminal cases are largely resolved, but the surviving children and extended family remain the people carrying the consequences of what happened inside the apartment that night.
Author note: Last updated November 10, 2026.