Death of Gabriel Granillo

On June 6, 2006, a teenage MS-13 gang member named Gabriel Granillo was stabbed to death at Ervan Chew Park, in the Neartown district in Houston, Texas. His killer, Ashley Paige Benton, underwent a criminal murder trial which resulted in a hung jury. Benton's lawyers and the assistant Harris County district attorney agreed to give Benton probation, in exchange for Benton pleading guilty to aggravated assault. Her probation was ended early in 2009, and her criminal charge was to be dismissed as part of terms of successfully completing her probation.

In 2008 Skip Hollandsworth of Texas Monthly referred to Benton as "Houston’s most famous teenage killer" and stated that the fact that the stabbing took place in the central city, and the fact that Ashley Benton was a white, Anglo teenage girl involved in gangs shocked Houstonians. The Houston Press wrote that the resulting murder trial "fascinated Houston".In 2014 Andy Warren of the Houston Chronicle listed the Granillo stabbing among the "infamous crimes in the Houston area". A 2011 novel, The Knife and the Butterfly, is based upon the incident.

Ashley Benton was a student at Lamar High School and socialized with members of the gang "Crazy Crew." According to police reports, it mainly engaged in low level crime. Hollandsworth described it as, compared with other Houston gangs, not "much of a gang". Benton, previously a student at Lanier Middle School and Hogg Middle School, moved to live with her grandmother in a suburban area in northwest Houston, and attended Cypress Creek High School. However she returned to her mother's Montrose residence and enrolled in Lamar in April 2006. Prior to the incident Benton had no arrest record. She was 16 years old at the time of Granillo's death.

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