A Dallas man is accused of killing his girlfriend and hiding her body inside his closet.
Garland police fielded a tip from a witness early Monday morning saying that a woman had been killed and her body could be found in an apartment in the 1300 block of West Wheatland Road in Dallas, per The Dallas Morning News.
At around 1:50 a.m., officers from the Dallas Police Department arrived at the residence, where the occupant, 34-year-old Omar Lucio, allegedly refused to come out for roughly an hour, per a DPD news release. After taking Lucio into custody and gaining entry to the apartment, police found 27-year-old Corinna Johnson unresponsive and wrapped in bedding inside one of the closets. Attempts made by Dallas Fire-Rescue to revive her failed, per WFAA.
Johnson was the mother of a 7-year-old boy and had been dating Lucio for around seven years, her sister, Erica Hernandez, told DMN. A GoFundMe has been set up to help the victim’s family cover funeral expenses and more, having already raised just over $5,000.
The accounts from both the unnamed witness in Garland — a woman whom Lucio had allegedly been seeing for several months — and Lucio upon his arrest suggest that the alleged domestic violence incident began after Lucio and Johnson had been forcibly removed from a bar in Downtown Dallas late Saturday evening.
He reportedly “snapped” when the couple began arguing in his vehicle, but he allegedly “thought it was going to be okay and that they could sleep it off and wash it off” upon arriving back at his apartment, Lucio allegedly told investigators, who noted that he had visible injuries on his hands, per WFAA.
As the witness told police, she had picked up Lucio at 1 a.m. early Sunday but forced him to return to check on Johnson after learning about the fight, per DMN. She recalled entering Lucio’s place and seeing the victim bruised, bloodied, and lying on the bathroom floor.
The suspect told police that he had cleaned Johnson up and put her in bed, where she allegedly told him she would be fine, but she stopped breathing shortly thereafter, per WFAA. The incident, which occurred in Council Member Tennell Atkins’ District 8, is still under investigation.
Lucio was booked into Dallas County jail on murder charges. However, he also faces several charges stemming from what appears to have been at least one separate street racing incident in Grand Prairie. These charges include several counts of collision causing injury or serious injury and racing on a highway causing serious bodily injury. His total bond amount is $1,585,000.
In Dallas, there have been 3,995 reports of family violence crimes made this year as of April 18, per data from the City’s crime analytics dashboard. Of the 63 homicides clocked, nine have fallen under the family violence category. While just over 60% of all violent crime victims have been black or Hispanic women, the vast majority of murder victims have been black or Hispanic men.
DPD has been significantly understaffed for several years, with just 3,000 officers able to be deployed in the field, whereas a City report recommended a force of around 4,000 to meet public safety needs. Yet when compared to the taxpayer dollars spent on police in high-crime jurisdictions like Chicago or New York, DPD operates on far less, with the Dallas City Council allocating the department just $654 million this fiscal year.
