A 2-year-old child is in the hospital in critical condition after she was shot Sunday evening in East Dallas.
Dallas police responded to a shooting call in the 8500 block of Sweetwater Drive at approximately 8:15 p.m. After an initial investigation, police determined that a man had fired shots into a vehicle where the child was sitting, striking the toddler.
The suspect was taken into custody, and the young girl was transported to the hospital. The Dallas Police Department has not identified the name of the suspect or the victim and did not comment on the relationship, if there was any, between the two.
Police said the shooting is still under investigation. No other injuries were reported in the incident.
The shooting, which was logged as an aggravated assault, occurred in District 7, which is represented by Council Member Adam Bazaldua.
So far this year, the City of Dallas has recorded 3,935 reports of aggravated assault, with the greatest number of them by far — 626 — occurring in District 7, according to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard. The next highest number of aggravated assaults (450) occurred in District 6, which is represented by Council Member Omar Narvaez.
The Dallas Police Department is struggling to keep a lid on crime, hindered by a chronic shortage of police officers and a limited budget. Currently, the department fields about 3,000 officers, even though an analysis has recommended that a city of Dallas’ size should have about 4,000 officers to adequately patrol it.
DPD has been operating on a budget of $654 million this fiscal year, far less than the budgets of other high-crime cities like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Crime is particularly rampant in Downtown Dallas, where the crime rate is exponentially higher than in the downtown area of nearby Fort Worth, as repeatedly shown in monthly crime analyses conducted by the Metroplex Civic & Business Association.