There was a scary moment Thursday as hundreds of people were evacuated from the Dallas County Health Building and other nearby adjacent buildings while the authorities searched for an active shooter.
Thankfully, this turned out to be a false alarm, according to the Dallas County Sheriff.
Sheriff Marian Brown and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins told reporters outside the building that they responded to an active shooter situation because a person inside one of the buildings had called a relative and said that she had heard between five and eight banging noises inside.
That relative, in turn, called the Dallas Police Department, which responded with a SWAT team that cleared the building with the help of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office.
Afterward, deputies conducted a second sweep of the building but did not find anything.
“We wanted to go back and make sure that we checked all of those doors that were locked and made sure that there were no persons inside the building, so that’s where we are at this point,” Brown said to reporters, The Dallas Express included.
Brown said the caller indicated that the noises could have been from nearby construction, but it was unknown whether any construction was happening in the building at that time.
No rounds of ammunition were found or anything indicative of where a round could have struck the building.
Both Brown and Jenkins said they were glad the person made the call, even though the sounds turned out not to be gunfire.
“And because the individual wasn’t sure, we’re glad that she would rather err on the side of caution and call us out and let us make sure because it very well could have been a situation where there were persons in there working with no knowledge [of the event],” Brown said.
Three months ago, there was a murder-suicide at the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Two people died during that situation, so people were on edge when the initial report of gunfire came in.
More generally, Dallas has faced surging rates of violent crime this past year, with gun-related offenses seeing an uptick of over 12% compared to one year prior, according to the DPD’s crime dashboard. In City Councilman Jaime Resendez’s District 5, identified as the worst in Dallas by The Dallas Express for its monthly Crime Boss feature, assaults have risen by 53% year-over-year in January.
“Luckily, we don’t have any injuries today,” Jenkins said. “And [the police] did a really good job evacuating all of our agencies. The Marshal was here and did an excellent job as to [seeing] the health services employees getting out of the building.”
Jenkins said the employees would work from home into the weekend because of the potential trauma they might have gone through while dealing with this situation, especially in light of the prior incident.