Houston Chronicle database tells the heartbreaking stories of homicide victims

Friday marked the official launch of the Houston Chronicle’s latest project: The Homicide Report.

The database aims to tell the stories of homicide victims in Harris County, which all-too often get told in stories about how they died, rather than how they lived. Starting from the county’s first homicide on New Year’s Day, more than a half dozen journalists across the Houston Chronicle newsroom worked – and continue to work – on documenting deaths and telling the stories of the departed

See some of the stories shared with the Houston Chronicle team in the gallery above.

While part of the project entailed data-mining raw information from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, some of the more sensitive work at the heart of the project was connecting with the loved ones of those who have been killed. That required, in most cases, making calls to grieving family members, sometimes dozens in a day, to try and let the person they lost have a voice among the noise of violence.

“My biggest concern in calling the loved ones of these victims was re-traumatizing them,” Houston Chronicle data journalist Stephanie Lamm tweeted about the project. “But nearly every person I called thanked me and said they’ve been wanting someone, anyone to care about their loved one’s death.