Shootings involving teens in recent years in Fort Worth have left victims’ families and community members with many questions.
This past year, a total of 10 fatal gunshot victims in Fort Worth last year were between the ages of 1 and 18, and five more minors were charged in fatal shootings.
“It seems like the shooters that used to be the 19-, 20- and 21-year-olds — sometimes now we’re getting more the 14-, 13- and 12-year-olds,” explained LaWanda Saunders, a detective with the Fort Worth Police Department Gun Violence Unit, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
She suggested that teenagers’ state of mind has much to do with the propensity for gun violence, especially in the age of social media.
“You can get instant fame, you can get instant recognition,” Saunders said. “Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame, and if they do something crazy and wild and outlandish and it’s caught on film, then they’re going to be famous, and then they’ll get that respect that they’re looking for.”
The Fort Worth community has been trying to address teen gun violence. For instance, since its creation in 2019, the nonprofit VIP FW has been working with local police and community stakeholders to mentor at-risk males between the ages of 12 and 29. It mobilizes ex-gang members and more to mediate conflicts.
“We’re designed to attack group violence, gang violence, cyclical violence,” VIP FW leader Rodney McIntosh said in a 2022 interview, noting that the organization had interrupted upwards of 74 shootings then.
Another organization working to raise awareness and curb teen gun violence is Mothers of Murdered Angels, a nonprofit that LaKeisha Mackey helped to launch after losing her 19-year-old son, Derrick Johnson, in 2020. Four suspects, one of whom was 17 years old, allegedly shot Johnson to death in the parking lot of his apartment complex on his way home from a movie.
“It gives me completion, you know, it helps me get through my grieving,” Mackey said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I can help others, I can … talk to them. I can walk with them through it.”
The alarming trend in teen shooters and victims is not limited to Fort Worth.
As recently reported by The Dallas Express, the year 2023 closed out with a deadly shootout in Dallas’ District 3, which Council Member Zarin D. Gracey represents. One of the suspects, 17-year-old Obbie Perez, allegedly relayed to Dallas police that he drove 15-year-old Elijah Martinez to Mountain Creek Branch library on December 30, 2023, to meet with 15-year-old Angel Solis. Solis was reportedly going to sell Martinez an AR-15 rifle that Martinez allegedly meant to steal by using fake money to complete the transaction. According to Perez, both Solis and Martinez began shooting at one another once the former realized the purported trick — both ended up shot dead.
On the national scale, data from the CDC shows that firearm-related incidents — including homicides, accidents, and suicides — were the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens between the ages of 1 and 19 in 2020 and 2021.
While 11 criminal homicides have already been reported in Dallas this year as of January 21, a total of 246 were logged in 2023, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. Not only was this a 15% increase from 2022, but the overwhelming majority of the victims were black and Hispanic. Their median age was 31 years old.
It remains to be seen whether the murder rate will continue to climb as the Dallas Police Department continues to deal with its longstanding staffing shortage.
DPD currently fields approximately 3,000 officers despite a City report recommending 4,000 to properly ensure public safety in Dallas. Meanwhile, City officials budgeted just $654 million for the department this year, considerably less than other high-crime municipalities, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Moreover, comparative studies on Downtown Dallas and Fort Worth’s downtown area have shown a stark disparity in crime. The former consistently logs more criminal offenses overall, while the latter is patrolled by a specialized neighborhood police unit working in concert with private security guards.
