A Sugar Land man was sentenced to 50 years in prison this week for shooting a tattoo artist at a Richmond Avenue tattoo parlor, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced.

“The victim in this case was moments away from leaving for the night when the defendant came in and started trouble,” Ogg said. “While another employee began to remove the defendant from the shop, the defendant started shooting. Because of his actions, a family lost a loved one and the gunman will spend decades in prison.”

She noted that she wants an end to a culture of gun violence that continues to see people indiscriminately pull out guns and start shooting.

Abdul-Rahman Khan, 27, was sentenced Thursday to 50 years in prison and a $10,000 fine by the Harris County jury that convicted him of murder for the fatal shooting of 33-year-old Peter Pina, a tattoo artist at the Electric Chair Tattoo & Piercing shop on Richmond, on June 14, 2016.

It was late on a Tuesday night when Khan went into the shop with a friend who wanted a tattoo. Khan was there for less than an hour and eventually went into an employee-only back room where equipment is sterilized. Pina and another employee told him to leave the room, which had piercing needles, tattoo equipment and biological waste. When Khan refused to leave, Pina’s co-worker grabbed the defendant by the arm to escort him out the back door.

Khan pulled a pistol out of his pocket and shot Pina in the chest. Another tattoo artist and a customer were able to get the gun away from Khan. They held him there until Houston Police Department officers arrived.

Pina was pronounced dead at the scene.

Assistant District Attorney Stacy Scofield, a chief prosecutor who handled the case with ADA Keegan Childers, said Pina’s three sons are now growing up without a father because of Khan’s actions.

“Mr. Pina was a hardworking man who had custody of his three sons and was taking care of them,” Scofield said. “He went to work at one of his three jobs and never came home again because Mr. Khan murdered him.”

Scofield noted that Khan has several charges pending in Dallas, including an allegation that he pulled a gun on a police officer. After he was charged with Pina’s murder and arrested, Khan was freed on bail and went to Dallas. While there, he was thrown out of a bar in Deep Ellum and pulled a gun on a homeless man and then a local business owner.

When the police arrived to detain him, he is seen on a Dallas police officer’s body-worn camera pointing a gun directly at her at chest level. He then points at another officer and tries to run away while pointing his gun at the officers.

The jurors who sentenced Khan on Thursday saw the body-worn video and heard testimony from a Dallas Police Department officer about the case.

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Suzanne Garofalo

Communications Division, Harris County District Attorney’s Office

1201 Franklin St.

Houston, TX 77002