A man was found shot dead in his high-end West Dallas apartment last week.
When officers from the Dallas Police Department (DPD) homicide unit responded to the Yorktown Luxury Apartments at 660 Yorktown Street on July 16th, it was 12:36 p.m. in the afternoon.
“Everybody was shocked because that’s not normal in a community like that,” said Dallas Police Officer Brian Martinez. “For the most part, that’s a very gentrified nice area. There’s a couple of local stores around the corner and restaurants. There’s actually a golf place right next door that brings families so this is not common whatsoever in that area.”
A single gunshot killed the man whom DPD declined to name, according to media reports.
“There were a bunch of phone calls to police regarding yelling and screaming in the hallway from the management of the apartment complex and from residents who lived in the area saying they weren’t sure where the yelling and screaming was coming from and there were family members trying to get us into the apartment complex,” Martinez told Dallas Express. “Management was getting a lot of calls about suspicious people regarding noise, knocking and banging on the door so much. That’s when the call to us first initiated. Through the officer’s investigation, it was confirmed that there was a deceased individual inside the apartment.”
Although it was the 116th homicide in Dallas this year, Dallas Police Sergeant Warren Mitchell said violent crime has been trending downward.
“When it was spiking, it looked like we were going to go beyond what we had last year but since our crime plan has been put in place, we are starting to see crime trending downwards,” Mitchell told Dallas Express.
As previously reported in Dallas Express, last year, Dallas saw some 252 homicides, the most in nearly two decades. This time last year, only 87 had been killed.
The Violent Crime Reduction Plan includes a mobile crisis response team that establishes violence interrupters, creates the Office of Community Police Oversight, reintroduces the Youth Support Services Division, founds the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions to mitigate circumstances that contribute to violent crime, and embraces the recommendations set forth by the Mayor’s Taskforce on Safe Communities, according to DPD Chief Eddie Garcia.
“Our statistical data shows that argument/conflict among acquaintances is a primary cause to our violent crime in our community,” Garcia previously told Dallas Express. “The root cause of those arguments/conflicts can be traced back to a number of societal issues.”
Those societal issues include family violence.
“The crime plan consists of three strategies – a near-term strategy, a mid-term strategy, and a long-term strategy to reduce the trend of violent crime,” said Garcia who, as the 30th police chief of the Dallas Police Department, is the first Latino to serve in the position.