Alexus Williams avoided a possible life-without-parole verdict by admitting three murder counts tied to the 2021 deaths of a Houston family.
HOUSTON, Texas — The prosecution of Alexus Williams ended not with the capital murder trial that had been approaching for years, but with a plea agreement that converted three of Texas’ most serious criminal charges into murder convictions and a 40-year prison sentence.
The agreement resolved Williams’ role in the June 30, 2021 deaths of Donyavia Lagway, 29, Gregory Carhee, 35, and their daughter Harmony Carhee, 6. Williams, 33, did not shoot the victims, a fact never disputed in the case. Prosecutors instead accused her of directing childhood friend Xavier Davis to the family’s apartment after her relationship with Lagway ended. Davis later admitted carrying out the killings and received a death sentence. Williams’ defense argued that she intended a robbery rather than murder, creating a central factual dispute that would have been tested at trial had she not pleaded guilty.
The legal stakes immediately changed when Williams accepted the agreement. She had been charged in 2022 with three counts of capital murder and an aggravated assault count connected with a 10-year-old girl who was shot but survived. A conviction on the capital counts could have resulted in life imprisonment without parole. Under the negotiated resolution, Williams pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, the aggravated assault allegation was dropped, and the parties settled on 40 years in state prison. Houston Chronicle reporting said Williams can become eligible for parole after serving 30 years, although the ultimate decision on any future release would be made through the state parole process.
The plea was not inevitable. As the scheduled trial neared in September 2026, Williams initially rejected an offer providing essentially the same punishment. Prosecutors withdrew the proposal and prepared to take the capital murder case to a jury. Negotiations continued as the court waited, and Williams ultimately signed the agreement Sept. 29. She returned to court several days later for victim-impact statements, where relatives of the three people killed spoke about the lasting damage to the family. Williams declined to make a statement before Judge Brian Warren imposed the sentence.
The agreement also created a stark contrast with the punishment given to Davis. He pleaded guilty to capital murder in March 2025 but still faced a jury because prosecutors sought the death penalty. The proceeding became a lengthy punishment trial in which jurors heard about the June 2021 killings, Davis’ background, evidence prosecutors said showed future dangerousness and mitigating evidence offered by his lawyers. On April 17, 2025, jurors chose death. Davis therefore received the state’s harshest punishment, while Williams resolved her separate prosecution through a fixed term of years after the state accepted reduced charges.
Both cases grew from the same night at an apartment on Fondren Road. Houston police said officers were sent there about 10:35 p.m. after relatives were alerted to a shooting. Inside, officers found Lagway, Carhee and Harmony dead. The couple’s 10-year-old daughter had also been shot in the arm. Authorities said she survived by remaining motionless while Davis was in the apartment and contacted her grandmother after he left. A 1-year-old child inside the home was not wounded, and another child was elsewhere. The surviving daughter was hospitalized and later became the only eyewitness able to testify about what happened in the apartment.
Houston police identified Davis within a day and arrested him July 1, 2021, while he was in custody on an unrelated charge. Prosecutors later presented evidence describing a chain of preparation around the shooting. Testimony at Davis’ proceedings said he used a vehicle taken at gunpoint before going to the family’s home and later burned it in Pearland. Police and subsequent court reporting also described money recovered after his arrest and other physical evidence tying him to the crime. Davis’ eventual guilty plea meant jurors considering his punishment did not have to decide whether he was the person who fired the shots.
The prosecution of Williams required a different kind of proof because she was not present as the gunman. Authorities focused on her relationship with Lagway, her connection to Davis and communications surrounding the attack. Prosecutors said Williams had dated Lagway and knew the family’s apartment. The relationship ended shortly before the shooting, according to court reporting. Lagway had returned to Carhee and was pregnant at the time of her death. Williams knew Davis from childhood, and prosecutors alleged she pointed him toward the family and told him that money could be found in the home.
Investigators also cited electronic communications. Text messages between Davis and Williams were described as important to establishing her connection to the crime. Multiple reports said they were linked by a FaceTime call around the time of the killings. Some accounts based on court documents stated that Williams watched the shooting unfold, while later reporting on testimony said investigators believed she may have watched the killings or may have been shown the aftermath. Because the accounts differ on the precise scope of what the video call showed, the established point is that authorities treated the communication as part of the evidence linking Williams to Davis during the episode.
Those circumstances supported the prosecution’s claim that Williams bore responsibility even though Davis pulled the trigger. Prosecutors said she chose the family Davis would confront and that the killings would not have occurred without her role. Her lawyers rejected the accusation that she had ordered a massacre. They maintained that she had arranged for Davis to commit a robbery and disputed that the evidence proved she wanted Lagway, Carhee and Harmony killed. The guilty pleas resolved the case without requiring jurors to decide between those competing accounts of her original intent, while establishing her criminal responsibility through the three murder convictions she accepted.
The surviving daughter’s testimony in Davis’ case showed why that distinction mattered to prosecutors. She was 10 when the attack occurred and 14 when she appeared in court. She described Davis shooting members of her family while the youngest child remained alive. Her survival provided prosecutors with a witness who could identify what Davis did inside the home, while Williams’ case depended more heavily on evidence outside the apartment: communications, her history with Lagway, her relationship with Davis and the state’s account of how he came to target the family.
Relatives addressed those separate roles when they spoke at Williams’ sentencing. Some said the 40-year term did not feel sufficient when Davis had been condemned to death. Others focused less on comparing punishments and more on the three surviving children, who lost both parents and a sister in a matter of minutes. Family members said the children continue to live with the consequences. Lagway had also recently learned she was pregnant, according to reporting documenting the case. Williams listened as relatives spoke and did not make remarks of her own before the court completed the sentencing.
The plea agreement means prosecutors will not have to present the original capital murder theory against Williams at a full trial. It also closes the last major pending prosecution tied directly to the family’s deaths. Davis remains on death row, and Williams is beginning a sentence measured in decades. The different outcomes reflect both defendants’ distinct procedural paths: one admitted capital murder and left punishment to a jury; the other accepted reduced murder charges in exchange for a predetermined term. For the family, both cases now have judgments, even as the effects described in court remain unresolved in the lives of the surviving children.
Author note: Last updated November 10, 2026.