A group of people were discovered tied up in a South Dallas home Saturday after one of the victims managed to get help despite having been shot.
Dallas police arrived at the 900 block of Medalist Drive shortly before noon, eventually encountering three robbery victims, one of whom was fatally shot.
All three individuals had apparently been held captive inside their home and robbed by an unknown suspect, although many questions remain unanswered as the investigation is still ongoing.
The neighborhood learned about the unsettling incident when Mario Gordon, a newcomer to Dallas from Georgia, went to check out why his dog was barking and discovered a woman wearing only a t-shirt and bleeding from her head.
“She was disoriented for one, she was trying to tell me somebody had broken in or something like that, she had told me she was shot,” Gordon said to NBC 5 DFW.
He dialed 911, gave the woman a chair, and waited with her until help arrived over near Polk Street and Camp Wisdom Road.
“When the paramedics came, they were asking the same thing, and she didn’t want to give anything, and they had to let her know, ‘Like sweetheart, you’re not in trouble or anything we just trying to help see where you came from,'” Gordon said, per NBC 5.
Eventually, the woman was able to identify the house she had come from, and the two other victims were discovered.
Deleon Williams, 30, had been shot and killed while his hands were bound. Another male victim was also tied up but uninjured. As of Monday, the female victim was hospitalized in critical condition.
“I was shocked when I found out what else they found down there. That blew me away. That was totally unexpected for me,” Gordon told Fox 4 KDFW.
The incident occurred in Council Member Zarin Gracey’s District 3, where simple assaults, motor vehicle thefts, burglaries, and drug offenses have been on the rise.
As of October 3, Dallas police have recorded 4,550 burglary incidents, 5,097 aggravated assaults, and 195 criminal homicides citywide, according to data from the City’s crime overview dashboard.
The Dallas Police Department has been dealing with a serious shortage of officers for years, maintaining a force of fewer than 3,200 sworn personnel. A City report previously indicated a force of 4,000 officers was needed to adequately police Dallas.
Crime rates in Downtown Dallas have been especially high amid the shortage, with the neighborhood logging considerably more offenses than Fort Worth’s downtown area. The latter is patrolled by a dedicated special police unit and private security guards.