Less than one week after a man was killed on a Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) train, another murder occurred at a transit station.
One person was fatally shot at the Pearl/Arts District Station in downtown Dallas around 7 p.m. on October 5, a DART representative told The Dallas Express. DART police responded to the scene.
“The suspect was taken into custody, and DART PD is continuing to investigate,” the representative said. “Service has been fully restored.”
Immediately after the shooting, DART implemented a bus bridge — a temporary shuttle service — to get riders to their destinations, according to Fox 4 KDFW. As of press time, police had not released the identities of either the suspect or the victim.
At the time, DART Police Chief Charles Cato told The Dallas Express these kinds of crimes were “extremely rare” and said crime had been decreasing across the system over the past year.
However, since January, crime has been increasing on DART lines — with offenses such as arson, assault, robbery, and drug-related crimes rising from 3.4 per 100,000 riders in January to 6.81 in June. The most common offenses were possession of drug paraphernalia, followed by assault, drugs, and theft. Most incidents occurred on station platforms, followed by on-board trains.
Overall, crime on DART has increased nearly 44% since last year — though excluding drug offenses, it would have fallen by more than 6%. Cato previously said DART police have increased officer presence across the system, with an average response time of about six minutes for top-priority calls.
In September, local officials on the Regional Transportation Council (RTC), under the North Central Texas Council of Governments, passed a resolution demanding crime statistics from DART and other transit agencies, as The Dallas Express reported. Dallas City Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn, an RTC member, had said DART was withholding detailed crime data.
In July, a suspect allegedly stabbed and killed a man in Richardson near a DART station, then fled by train, as The Dallas Express previously reported. Police arrested him hours later at another DART station more than 12 miles away.