Two suspects from Louisiana have been indicted on capital murder charges in connection with a fatal shooting at a Walmart store in Frisco last year.
The shooting on November 15, 2023, at 8555 Preston Road left one man dead and another injured. Frisco police deemed the shooting a random attack.
Information provided by the public helped detectives identify the suspects several months ago, and the investigators continued working the case to obtain additional evidence, according to the Frisco Police Department.
Last month, detectives from Frisco traveled to Monroe, Louisiana, to serve three warrants on 42-year-old Jhirrell Harris, who was confined at the Ouachita Jail on an unrelated offense. He has been charged with capital murder, aggravated robbery, and aggravated assault related to the shooting incident in Frisco.
The other suspect, 37-year-old Stephanie Gayden, is also from Monroe. Gayden is in the Collin County jail, where she is being held on a $1 million bond.
The murder victim was 62-year-old Dung Doan, a married man and father of two children. Doan was from Vietnam and had legally immigrated to the U.S. less than a year before he was shot.
“They came here for a better life, and this happened. Nobody in a million years would have thought that this type of situation would happen to him in the U.S.,” his niece, Kaitlin Nguyen, told CBS News Texas. “For him and his wife, when they got the visa to come to the U.S., they think that this is a much safer environment. This is the land of opportunity.”
The second victim was 20-year-old Zachary Lowe. Lowe told his family that someone asked him for a cigarette and then brandished a gun and demanded money. The family said that Lowe handed the assailant his wallet and turned to run away, but the suspect shot him twice in the back, as NBC 5 DFW reported.
Lowe survived but required surgery to remove his gall bladder and part of his intestines in the aftermath of the shooting.
“The random acts of violence by Harris and Gayden are unfathomable tragedies that have affected the Doan and Lowe families in ways that cannot be reversed,” said Assistant Chief Darren Stevens of the Frisco Police Department, per NBC 5.
“I would like to thank the public for their assistance. An anonymous tip received earlier this year through Tip411 helped focus our investigative efforts, and the information we received helped expedite the identification of both subjects involved,” Stevens added. “Without question, the power of citizen participation in keeping communities safe cannot be underestimated.”
In a previous news release about the shooting incident, the Frisco Police Department noted that these types of crimes are rare in the city while acknowledging that the criminal element is always looking for opportunities to victimize members of the community.
However, in nearby Dallas, murders and shootings are much more common. As of June 17, there had been 96 murders and 2,648 aggravated assaults in Dallas this year, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. That makes for a rate of 7.36 murders per 100,000 people in Dallas.
The Dallas Police Department has been hampered in its efforts to fight crime due to a chronic shortage of officers. DPD only has around 3,000 sworn officers citywide, despite a prior City report claiming roughly 4,000 were necessary to maintain public safety in a jurisdiction the size of Dallas.
The strain on officers will likely continue as the City of Dallas budgeted only $654 million this fiscal year for DPD, significantly less than other high-crime jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, spend on public safety.