One person is dead, and two others are injured following a shooting at a prom afterparty in South Fort Worth on Sunday.
Fort Worth police said the shooting took place at a house near 3900 Singleleaf Ln. shortly before 1 a.m. on April 21, reported NBC 5 DFW.
Investigators have not been able to identify the suspects, who fled the scene before the police arrived. Two injured persons were taken by private vehicles to John Peter Smith Hospital at about 1:15 a.m., per WFAA. The injured victims are reportedly in stable condition.
The third victim, who was identified as 19-year-old Daniel Olalde Moreno, was transported by private vehicle to Harris Southwest Hospital but later died due to his gunshot wounds, reported NBC 5.
The shooting took place outside a home where an Arlington Heights Senior Prom afterparty was occurring. The event was planned to be a small gathering; however, someone shared the host’s address on a social media site and the party soon got out of hand, with more than 300 in attendance, WFAA reported.
The host family reportedly told the rowdy, uninvited guests to leave, and the group spilled out onto the street, where a fight soon broke out over a dice game, per WFAA.
Neighboring homeowner Eric Tatum is haunted by the chaos that occurred in his neighborhood.
“And then all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, in sequence,” Tatum told NBC 5. “It was something that was really, really out of control at that point.”
Tatum later found a bullet hole in his garage door.
“When I saw that, it made me think again, ‘Oh, that was really kind of close,'” he told WFAA.
The Dallas murder rate has long been a concern for residents and police. Last year, the city saw a 15% increase in homicides compared to the previous year. This year, as of April 19, there have been 63 murders in Dallas, according to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard.
Efforts to fight crime in the city have been hampered by a chronic shortage of police officers. The department has around 3,000 officers in the field, even though a City report previously advised a force of roughly 4,000 is necessary to reduce lengthy police response times and adequately meet public safety needs.
The Dallas Police Department was allocated a budget of $654 million this fiscal year by City officials, far less than the budgets of other high-crime cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
