Man stabs his roommate to death after they argued over his puppy, Texas cops say

A 19-year-old man stabbed one of his roommates to death with a kitchen knife after they got into an argument over his new puppy, police in Texas say.

Responding to a call around 9:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, Houston police officers found a woman, Adrienne Russell, lying in the backyard of a home on the city’s southeast side, according to a criminal complaint filed Jan. 3.

She had multiple stab wounds and, within a minute of arriving at the scene, she was pronounced dead, the court documents state.

Officers spoke with one of her roommates, Michael Bailey, about what happened.

He said he had gone out for a bike ride, leaving Russell and their new roommate Derrion Mitchell alone at the house.

Mitchell had moved in three weeks ago, Bailey said, adding that Mitchell and Russell seemed “to get along fine,” according to court documents. However, Mitchell had gotten a puppy around Christmas and kept it locked in his room, which caused it to whine constantly — which upset Russell, who was “a pet lover.”

When he returned from his bike ride, Bailey discovered Russell bloody and “gurgling” in the backyard, he said. But what led up to the stabbing, he didn’t know.

Mitchell and his puppy were nowhere to be seen, documents said.

Neighbors told police they overheard commotion and yelling coming from the backyard of the home, and at first they didn’t think anything of it because “there is constant yelling and screaming over there,” the documents said. But that night, the neighbor heard the voices of two men, one trying to stop the other from doing something, yelling “that’s enough!”

Two days later, on Jan. 2, detectives spoke again with Bailey, documents said. Sitting inside an interview room, he told investigators he hadn’t been completely honest before, that he’d lied out of fear.

He didn’t go on any bike ride on New Year’s Eve, he was at the home, witnessed Russell’s killing and tried to stop it, Bailey said, according to the documents.

He was playing video games when Russell started screaming in the living room, Bailey said. Russell and Mitchell had been arguing about his dog, but the situation seemed to have escalated.

Bailey stepped into the room and saw her on the ground with Mitchell driving punches into her from above.

Bailey stepped in, pulling Mitchell off of her. She ran for the backyard as Mitchell got up, grabbed a kitchen knife and went out the front door, the documents show.

Bailey ran after him, telling him to stop, saying “You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to kill somebody.” But Mitchell kept heading moving the backyard, knife in hand.

“Mike, I do this every day,” Mitchell said, according to the documents, and pushed open the side fence gate. Mitchell lunged on top of Russell and buried the knife in her before Bailey could intervene, Bailey told police.

Finished with Russell, he turned to Bailey and threatened him to keep quiet, telling him “I can get to you faster than they can get to me,” documents said.

Then he left, walking out the front door with the knife and his puppy, Bailey told investigators. Moments later, Bailey dialed 911.

Mitchell was arrested Jan. 3 on a charge of murder and booked into the Harris County Jail, documents show. His bail was set at $250,000.

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