Birdville ISD said counselors would support students after police identified a kindergartner as one of three people who died.
HALTOM CITY, Texas — The killing of a Birdville ISD kindergartner and her mother near a school stadium shook classrooms and families across Haltom City after police said the child’s father arranged the meeting and carried out a targeted attack.
For many residents, the first public sign of the tragedy was not a police theory about motive but the sight of emergency vehicles near Birdville ISD Stadium and then a message that one of the dead was a Cheney Hills Elementary student. Authorities later identified the child as 6-year-old Nathy Mbuyi and her mother as 33-year-old Raissa Thatukila. Police said John Mbuyi, 30, shot both of them and then himself on March 27. The district said the shooting was not tied to school activities, but that did little to soften the impact of learning that a campus family had been pulled into a deadly case of domestic violence just off a familiar school site.
Birdville ISD moved quickly to address that impact. District officials said they were heartbroken by what had happened in the community and were working with Haltom City police. Cheney Hills Elementary prepared to receive students and staff with crisis counselors on campus, and a Saturday school session was canceled in the immediate aftermath. Those steps reflected how the story spread through the community: first as a public-safety emergency, then as a school loss. Nathy was not just one of three victims in a police investigation. She was a child known inside a neighborhood school, and that shaped the official response from the district. Administrators spoke in the language of grief, stability and routine, while police focused on the evidence that led them to conclude the shooting had been planned.
According to police, the violence began with a false promise. Detectives said John Mbuyi lured Thatukila and Nathy to the 6100 block of East Belknap Street under the pretense of giving them money. Officers were dispatched just before 4:30 p.m. to the stadium parking lot after reports of a shooting. When they got there, they found two female victims inside a vehicle and the suspected shooter outside. One victim died at the scene, and another died later at a hospital. In their first public remarks, police described the matter as an isolated domestic dispute and said there was no wider threat. Over the next few days, investigators hardened that description into a clearer conclusion. The department said the attack was “premeditated and targeted,” and that detectives no longer saw it as a spontaneous clash.
The police account also placed the killings inside a larger family conflict. Detectives said John Mbuyi and Thatukila were involved in an ongoing custody dispute over their daughter, and that evidence showed he held serious grievances toward her. Authorities added that he had recently been grieving the death of his father and had expressed concerning thoughts about death. Those statements pointed to motive, but they did not answer every question. Police did not say whether there had been previous warnings, whether court action in the custody matter was pending, or whether relatives had seen signs of escalating danger before the meeting in the parking lot. The department later said it would not release more information, citing the privacy of family and friends affected by the case.
That choice left schools, neighbors and the wider public with a painful set of facts and a limited picture of the family history behind them. News footage from the scene showed a white car, a rental-style box van and a ring of police tape near the stadium. Sgt. Rick Alexander said on the day of the shooting that the adults and child clearly knew one another and seemed to have a family relationship, a statement that signaled early on that this was not a random attack. By the time the city released names and a motive, the community had already begun filling the silence with memorial language, school support and questions about how violence tied to a private dispute could spill into a public place so suddenly.
The case now sits in a familiar but difficult place for investigators: the suspected shooter is dead, so there will be no murder trial, but official work still continues. Police still must complete reports, evidence review and coordination with the medical examiner. The school district, meanwhile, continues dealing with the longer aftermath that does not fit neatly into a press release — the absence of a student, the strain on staff and the need to explain a public tragedy in age-appropriate ways without releasing private family details. In that sense, the procedural next step belongs to police, but the lived next step belongs to the schools and the neighborhood around them.
Authorities have said there is no continuing threat and no indication that the shooting was connected to district operations. The next formal milestone is the completion of the police file and any later decision on whether more investigative records will be released.
Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.