A suspected burglar was shot dead after reportedly exchanging gunfire with Frisco police officers as he tried to flee the scene.
The Texas Rangers are investigating the officer-involved shooting, which occurred on Saturday in the 5500 block of Lorraine Drive. A man whose identity has yet to be confirmed by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office allegedly tried to rob a home in the Legacy apartment complex but ended up in a shootout with Frisco police. The west side of Frisco lies within Denton County, which is part of the Tarrant County Medical Examiner District, as East Texas Radio reported.
As A.J. Steele explained to NBC 5 DFW, he and his partner had driven their moving truck up to the garage door of their new apartment unit but could not get it open. After receiving help from maintenance, they opened the garage and discovered an alleged armed burglar inside.
“And there’s a dude in his car sitting, and it’s running, and he’s trying to reverse out. I knocked on his window and said, ‘Hey dude, what are you doing in my garage?’ He rolled down his window and said, ‘Uh,’ and really couldn’t say anything,” Steele recalled.
The man allegedly ditched his vehicle, which was blocked in by the moving truck, and barricaded himself inside the apartment.
Officers from the Frisco Police Department arrived on the scene shortly thereafter and spent several hours trying to get the suspect to surrender.
“There’s like six cop cars, and they all had their lights on,” a nearby resident who wished to remain anonymous told CBS News Texas. “There’s a ton of police, and they’re looking at an apartment diagonally below us, and some of them have their guns drawn and pointed at the door.”
The suspect later slipped out, and he allegedly began to fire on officers as they chased him across Legacy Drive to another gated community. The officers returned fire, and the suspect was fatally wounded.
The Frisco Police Department has called in the Texas Rangers to investigate the shooting death.
Although police have referred to it as an isolated incident, the apartment complex’s residents told reporters that they were shaken up.
“We don’t feel safe enough to stay, at least in this unit for sure,” Steele told NBC 5.
Property crime is prevalent across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, bolstered above all by surging rates of motor vehicle theft.
For instance, Dallas had logged 12,651 property crimes as of March 17, according to data from the City’s crime analytics dashboard. The most common offense was motor vehicle theft, with 3,379 reports — a year-over-year rise of 15.8% — followed by 2,361 reports of vehicle break-ins, 1,829 reports of vandalism, 1,417 reports of larceny, and 1,212 reports of burglary.
The Dallas Police Department has been grappling with a longstanding staffing shortfall, which has led to delayed response times, as extensively covered in The Dallas Express. DPD fields roughly 3,000 officers, even though a City report recommended a force of 4,000 to adequately ensure public safety.
Moreover, the Dallas City Council approved a budget of just $654 million this fiscal year, which is considerably less taxpayer money spent on public safety than in other high-crime jurisdictions, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
The effects of these shortfalls are most apparent in Downtown Dallas, which regularly logs more crime than neighboring Fort Worth’s city center. In February alone, the Metroplex Civic & Business Association found that crime was eight times higher in Downtown Dallas than in Fort Worth’s city center, which is patrolled by a dedicated police unit that works alongside private security guards.
