Two men were found shot inside a vehicle that crashed into a Garland apartment complex and caused a fire on Sunday.
Garland police officers and firefighters responded to a call on February 5 around 12:30 a.m. after a vehicle struck an apartment building and started a fire, according to CBS DFW.
The incident took place near the 4600 block of Saturn Road.
Emergency personnel arrived on the scene and started evacuating residents from nearby apartment buildings, according to a news release provided to The Dallas Express.
The fire had already begun to spread to the apartment building by the time first responders arrived, police said.
Garland police discovered that two men were shot in the vehicle.
Officers were able to identify one of the two victims as 22-year-old Quincy Lee Branch of Dallas, according to the department.
He was transported to a nearby hospital and pronounced deceased.
The identity of the other gunshot victim, a 19-year-old male out of Fort Worth, has not been released by police.
He is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said, and is expected to survive.
Garland police have begun investigating the crime as a murder. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Garland Police Department at 972-485-4840.
North Texas has seen its rate of violent crime continue to rise unabated this year, especially in Dallas, which as of Sunday had experienced an approximate 9% year-over-year increase in murders since the start of 2023.
The first homicide of the year was also a shooting, which occurred shortly after midnight on January 1. The incident involved a man confronting people who were allegedly firing off celebratory gunfire, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
In another incident not long afterward, an 11-year-old boy, who was an innocent bystander, was reportedly shot and killed when a fight broke out.
The Dallas Express contacted the Garland Police Department for additional information but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
