A shooting inside a Dallas shopping center on Saturday left one person dead, two injured, and some merchants questioning their safety.
Dallas police said the September 10 shooting occurred inside Big T Plaza just after 1:15 p.m.
The suspect was identified as 26-year-old Javis Dixon, a native of Vicksburg, Mississippi. He now faces murder charges and is currently sitting in the Dallas County jail.
The victim, Corderro Robinson, 36, died at the scene, according to the Dallas Police Department. Officers were able to keep the two other male victims alive until Dallas Fire-Rescue arrived and transported them to a local hospital.
The Dallas Express spoke with several plaza regulars and business owners who reported hearing multiple gunshots. Vendors said they hid behind their counters for safety until the shooting stopped.
“I felt I was going to die. I was scared,” Jwala KC, who works at a salon mere yards from where the shooting occurred, told The Dallas Express.
“Everyone’s been on edge” since the shooting, a plaza barbershop employee said.
Keith Song, general manager of Big T, said he plans to increase the shopping center’s security by hiring more off-duty police officers as security guards and increasing the hours that guards are present at the plaza.
He also plans to add more security cameras and install software that recognizes stolen vehicles in the parking lot.
However, enhanced security measures may not be enough to keep some merchants. The owner of the barbershop said he does not plan to renew his lease. “If people got to take guns to a place like this, I don’t want to be here,” he told The Dallas Express.
Several days after the shooting, Big T merchants said that business has been slower than usual, but they are not surprised, considering the mall has seen at least one other alleged incident of shots fired in the last four months. According to two workers, the alleged shooting occurred in the plaza earlier in the summer, but it appears to have gone unreported by local media.
Plaza regulars said Big T is not generally a violent shopping center, and the violence that does occur is the result of people coming in from out-of-state, as in the present case.