Lorenzo Salgado Araujo left his home in an unscathed white van early July 7 to pick up his brother and two other men for work building a house in the city's northern suburbs.

At 6:46 a.m., according to neighborhood video footage, a dark grey Jeep Grand Cherokee and a black Nissan Pathfinder closely trailed him without emergency lights or sirens in Magnolia Park, one of Houston's oldest Latino neighborhoods that remains mostly low-income and where residents say criminal activity is common.

Salgado Araujo sharply turned left onto a roadway under construction.