The pursuit of a shooting suspect by Arlington police ended with a crash Thursday night that injured six people.
Six people — including two teens — are recovering from non-life-threatening injuries after a suspect fleeing from police officers struck two other vehicles.
Officers with the Arlington Police Department (APD) were dispatched to the 1900 block of Chalice Road shortly after 6 p.m. following reports of gunfire during a fight between several people. No one was injured during the initial incident.
During interviews with witnesses, the officers obtained a description of the vehicle — a 2001 Infiniti QX4 — in which the alleged shooter had left the scene and later spotted the SUV traveling westbound on Pioneer Parkway. The driver of the Infiniti allegedly failed to stop when police attempted to pull him over. Officers opted to pursue him due to the original call being violent in nature, APD explained in a statement, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Traveling at a high speed, the Infiniti reportedly ran a red light at the Cooper Street intersection, striking a Toyota Prius and a Toyota Highlander. After the crash, the driver of the Infiniti allegedly tried to get away on foot, but officers captured him.
The driver, 32-year-old Roberto Rodriguez, and the other occupants of the Infiniti — a 25-year-old woman, a teen boy, and a teen girl — were hospitalized, as well as two women, aged 18 and 23, who were driving the other vehicles involved in the crash.
Several charges are pending for both Rodriguez and the teen boy, who APD said matched the description of the shooter on Chalice Road. Once doctors release him from the hospital, Rodriguez will be booked on one count of evading police causing serious bodily injury and one count of abandoning/endangering a child. The teen faces one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Police chases have been making the headlines recently, placing several departments’ pursuit policies under scrutiny.
Another high-speed police chase on February 25 also ended in a crash just before 2 a.m., as previously covered by The Dallas Express. Police in Haltom City allegedly spotted a teen driving recklessly in a Ford Mustang. Officers pursued the suspect all the way to Dallas after the driver allegedly failed to stop.
The teen allegedly ran through a red light at the intersection of I-35 frontage and Continental Avenue and crashed into an SUV. The teen driver and two teen passengers, as well as the two adult occupants of the SUV, were all hospitalized for non-life-threatening injuries.
As of February 29, some 2,626 motor vehicle thefts and 1,765 car break-ins had been logged in Dallas, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
Downtown Dallas regularly sees considerably higher numbers of vehicle-related crimes and more compared to Fort Worth’s city center, which is patrolled by a dedicated neighborhood police unit working in concert with private security officers.
This discrepancy can be explained in part by a significant staffing shortage within the Dallas Police Department. It fields just 3,000 officers despite a City report calling for 4,000 to curb crime and improve police response times.
Yet the Dallas City Council recently adopted a $654 million budget for DPD this year, which is considerably less taxpayer money allocated for police than in other high-crime jurisdictions, like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.