Gun violence in the form of several shootings and the abduction of a young girl at gunpoint resulted in two deaths in Fort Worth this Fourth of July.
Fort Worth police were busy responding to incidents in the southern and eastern areas of the city Thursday night and early Friday morning.
The first of at least three shootings first came to the department’s attention at around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, with officers responding to the 3700 block of Castleman Street in east Fort Worth. A block party had reportedly been going on, although the details surrounding the incident are still being investigated.
“It was a couple of people injured there on the yard like this right here on the street injured. One of them not really moving,” Bobby Warner, a resident of the Stop Six neighborhood, told Fox 4 KDFW. “We were just trying to enjoy the Fourth. It’s supposed to be a good day.”
Multiple people were hospitalized for injuries, with one person dying, according to the latest reports.
Two more shootings were reported within the following half hour — one of them just blocks away from the initial incident on Eastland Street at 11:47 p.m. While law enforcement believes that these two incidents are part of the same shooting spree, a presumably unrelated third shooting at a car wash on the 7500 block of West Cleburne Road at around 11:40 p.m. resulted in a person’s death, per NBC 5 DFW.
The two homicides are currently being investigated, and no further information about the victims had been released at the time of publication.
Fort Worth police were also grappling with a child abduction early Friday morning. A girl was reportedly taken from a home near Chisholm Trail Parkway and McPhearson Boulevard by two armed males, per Fox 4.
Officers located the suspects’ vehicle roughly an hour later at 3 a.m. and engaged in a pursuit when the driver allegedly refused to pull over. A car chase ensued, ending in a crash near Interstate 35W and Sycamore School Road.
The victim was recovered inside the vehicle, while the two suspects purportedly left the scene on foot. One of them, reportedly a minor, has been arrested while the other remains on the run. Police told Fox 4 that the victim was taken to Cook Children’s Medical Center and was unharmed.
None of the ages or identities of those involved in the abduction have been released.
Last year, Cowtown’s Independence Day celebrations also saw a spike in gun violence, including a shooting that killed three people and injured twice as many, as reported in The Dallas Express.
Despite these flare-ups, Fort Worth actually has far less criminal activity occurring in its downtown area than in Downtown Dallas. As covered recently in The Dallas Express, reports of assaults and property crime in the latter significantly outpaced the former in May.
According to an analysis from the Metroplex Civic & Business Association, which compares crime data on a monthly basis, Downtown Dallas logged 80 assaults, 66 thefts, 22 vandalism or destruction of property incidents, and eight robberies. Meanwhile, Fort Worth’s city center clocked seven assaults, 20 thefts, two vandalism incidents, and no robberies.
While the downtown area of Fort Worth is patrolled by a specialized neighborhood police unit and private security guards, the Dallas Police Department has struggled to keep officers’ response times up to par amid a critical staffing shortage. Only around 3,000 officers are fielded despite a City report previously calling for closer to 4,000 to adequately ensure public safety.
This shortfall is likely to persist, with the Dallas City Council allocating DPD a budget of just $654 million this fiscal year — far less than police departments in other high-crime cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.