A more detailed report from Chron.com below ....
This guy did live on campus. I lived in "Cougar Place" myself during my time at UH. It is on-campus housing for upper classman, similar in outward appearance to an old apartment complex, but it does qualify as a dorm. So anyone living here - as I did in 1995-96 - is prohibited by law from having a gun in their residence (though I guess technically you could keep it locked up in your vehicle?)
Anyway, I think this helps the pro CHL on campus cause. Anyone who has ever visited this campus, gone to school there, or lived on this campus knows how rough the surrounding neighorhood is. I was living on campus when CHL became legal in 1995, but had no way to legally carry because I lived on campus (where was I supposed to put my gun, legally?) Just simple drives to the grocery store from campus involved some very treacherous areas of town. This is not a place I would want my daughter to live unless she had some serious protection. And, sorry UH officials, but 500 camears and 50 campus cops don't cut it (see end of article below).
Maybe this story, if given in proper context to the rough surrounding neighborhood (notice in the story below how students were on edge thinking this was a gang initiation? a very plausible scenario in that part of Houston), will help Texans understand that not all college campuses in this state are located in idealic little college towns far removed from serious inner city violence, where the worst crimes on a Saturday night are drunk and disorderly frat boys. Not everyone goes to A&M or Texas Tech or Baylor. Some college students honestly NEED guns for protection.
Arrest made in killing of homeless man at UH
By DALE LEZON and JAMES PINKERTON Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
April 23, 2009, 8:58PM
It was a horrifying crime that intruded on an otherwise peaceful campus. Early on the morning of Feb. 7, passing students noticed that a man sleeping on a bus stop bench on the University of Houston central campus had been shot to death.
The discovery was made on a weekend when the campus was teeming with high school students attending a track meet, and many watched police examine the body behind a cordoned-off crime scene.
The victim, Joe David Tall, a 47-year-old drifter from the Northeast who had battled mental illness since he was a teenager, had been shot in the back of the head at close range.
Police on Thursday announced the arrest of a 32-year-old UH student, Jeremy Lee Pierce. He is charged with murder and remains in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $75,000 bail. A court hearing is scheduled for Friday.
The arrest was a relief for students who have lived with a feeling of unease since the shooting.
“I was a little concerned because the guy got shot where I’m supposed to take the bus,” said David Woods, a 25-year-old pharmacy student who lives at the same apartment complex as Pierce. “I haven’t been taking the bus at all since then. It’s a relief.”
But while it ended speculation the slaying was part of a gang initiation rite or a spillover of violence from adjoining neighborhoods, the arrest failed to answer the real question of why. Investigators have not released a motive for the killing.
Several students spoke of what they termed Pierce’s “peculiar” behavior, describing how he often carried on loud conversations with himself and spent much of his time inside the fenced grounds of Cougar Place, a rambling student apartment complex of two-story buildings.
“He would lay out on the concrete sidewalk, like screaming things,” said Jasmine Hall, a 20-year-old junior who lives in the complex. “I had no idea what he was saying; I would go the other way. Ask around. Everybody noticed him.”
Hall said she did not feel threatened by Pierce, despite his behavior.
“I don’t think he was a violent person by nature,” she said. “I think he suffers from other issues.”
Another Cougar Place resident who had several classes with the suspect said Pierce once followed him and a friend to the campus gymnasium. When they finished their workouts, they noticed he followed them back to the apartment, he said.
“He was always walking around” alone on the grounds of the complex, said the student, who asked only to be identified as Jermaine. “One time, he walked in, talking to himself. His skin was bloodshot all over, and he appeared drunk.”
The student said he had several sociology classes with Pierce, who told him he had dropped all but one class. Eventually, he stopped going to class at all, the student said.
University police said Pierce was detained Wednesday after he was involved in a confrontation with two friends, fellow students, on campus. Police said he threatened the pair with a gun. During the subsequent investigation, officials said the two told police Pierce had admitted to them that he had killed the homeless Tall.
Brad Wigtil, assistant chief of the university Department of Public Safety, said HPD investigators interviewed Pierce and obtained a recorded statement in which he admitted to fatally shooting Tall.
Suspect’s past
Aside from recollections from fellow students, little was known about Pierce Thursday. He graduated from Galveston College last May with an associate of arts degree in general studies, college officials confirmed. According to public records, he was convicted in 2005 of burglary of habitation in Wichita County and sentenced to 205 days in jail.
In the wake of the arrest, University officials on Thursday tried to allay student fears about campus safety, issuing a press release noting the campus is equipped with more than 500 security cameras and patrolled by nearly 50 police officers and two dozen security guards.
“It’s frightening,” Hall said. “Being in this neighborhood, already you have to be on guard. You think you’d be safe on campus.”
Reporters Jeannie Kever, Anita Hassan and Allan Turner contributed to this report.
dale.lezon@chron.com
james.pinkerton@chron.com
with UpTheIrons 
