Several people were killed in Dallas over the past few days, with the violence from last weekend continuing into the work week.
Thursday evening, Dallas police were called out to the scene of two more homicides in Pleasant Grove.
The first occurred in the 2000 block of Lewiston Avenue, which is located within Council Member Jaime Resendez’s District 5. According to a news release from the Dallas Police Department, the victim, LaDerrick Majors, was found shot and unresponsive. The 43-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene.
A Pleasant Grove shooting call was fielded by Dallas police about half an hour later in Council Member Adam Bazaldua’s District 7. Upon arriving at the scene, officers learned that a minor accident at the intersection of North Masters Drive and Carolina Oaks Drive had escalated into an argument between several individuals who may or may not have actually been involved in the crash.
According to police, a man opened fire and hit three people — all of whom were taken to a nearby hospital by Dallas Fire-Rescue. Ultimately, a 16-year-old died while two other unidentified victims were treated for non-life-threatening wounds.
Another homicide occurring in the same council district this week was reported in the 3200 block of Reed Lane at around 7 a.m. on April 29. According to a DPD news release, officers found the victim, 43-year-old Lakeisha Simpson, dead upon their arrival. The Dallas County medical examiner ruled the following day that her death had been caused by homicidal violence, but no further details have been released about this case.
As reported by The Dallas Express, two men were shot and killed last weekend. Henderson Giovonnii McCoy, 42, was found dead inside a home in East Oak Cliff Sunday morning, and Fermin Castillo, 31, was fatally wounded in a Pleasant Grove parking lot the night before.
As of May 2, there have been 68 criminal homicides recorded this year in Dallas — although City data on the crime analytics dashboard does not appear to have taken into account the latest fatalities. Council districts 7, 4, and 8 lead in murders, with the first two trending upwards compared to the numbers logged last year over the same period. The overwhelming majority of murder victims in Dallas have been black and Hispanic boys and men, as covered extensively by The Dallas Express.
DPD efforts to curb violent crime have been dampened by longstanding resource shortfalls. Although a City report recommended that a jurisdiction with the population size of Dallas be served by a police force of around 4,000 officers, DPD fields just 3,000. Furthermore, the Dallas City Council recently allocated just $654 million to DPD this fiscal year, which is considerably less than the spending on police seen in other high-crime cities, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Downtown Dallas has become a hot spot for crime as a result of these thinned police resources, logging considerably more crime than Fort Worth’s downtown district on a regular basis. A specialized neighborhood police unit and private security guards patrol Fort Worth’s city center.