Houston, Texas (KTRK) – Detectives who spoke with DC Cormier after he reported his son’s disappearance asked him to sit down. Then they told Houston’s father that his son, 20-year-old DJ Cormier, was found with a bullet to the head on the side of the road and died on March 9, 2021.
“I became empty,” recalls Cormier the Elder. “They told me he had been killed, and then I took the inquisitor aside and said, ‘Well, was my son found by the side of the road, as if he had been dumped like garbage, as if no one liked him or something? “”
As painful as learning his son’s death, Cormier said he’s now left wondering if DJ would still be alive if Quishawn Perdue, the person arrested in the DJ’s death, was sentenced on previous drug and weapons charges that were dismissed years ago.
The video above is from ABC13 Houston’s Streaming 24/7.
In Texas, carrying a gun while committing any other offense, including marijuana possession, is an offense in itself. But a 2019 law made it difficult to test whether the substance was illegal marijuana or legal cannabis, resulting in dozens of cases being dismissed each month.
Our investigation found more than 1,100 times in the past three years where police accused suspects of illegally carrying a gun on the streets of Harris County, but the judge threw out the case, sometimes within hours.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg blames misdemeanor judges, suggesting that other large Texas counties do not see the same problem. Thirteen investigators tried to verify the claim but were unable to verify it.
“We started noticing cases of guns being disposed of almost daily,” Og told 13 investigators Ted Oberg. “I asked our prosecutors working in the 24-hour courts what was going on. And they told me, anecdotally, that they believed the judges fired them because of the possible cause related to the smell of marijuana and the inability of the courts to discern whether the police officer actually smelled marijuana or cannabis.”
Cops can find allegedly illegal weapons, but when judges dismiss the case, the weapons can come back. It’s happened hundreds of times in Harris County, and we want to know why. So do law enforcement, as well as crime victims. We’re investigating tonight in Eyewitness News at 10 p.m.
Contact 13 investigators
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