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Dallas Love Field Shooting Suspect Has Criminal History

Dallas Love Field Shooter has Criminal History
Dallas police outside Dallas Love Field Airport after a woman opened fire inside and was shot by a police officer. | Image by Cooper Neill/The New York Times

New footage has emerged of the moment a woman allegedly opened fire in the Dallas Love Field Airport on Monday. Video obtained by CBS 11 shows the woman shooting a firearm toward the ceiling and passengers at the airport crouching and taking cover at the sound of gunfire.

The Dallas Express reported that 37-year-old Portia Odufuwa was dropped off at the airport around 11 a.m. on July 25, where she went into the restroom, emerged near the ticket area wearing a hoodie, and reportedly began shooting at the ceiling. Odufuwa was approached by an officer inside the airport and given commands to drop the weapon.

When Odufuwa allegedly pointed the gun at the officer, he shot her in the lower extremities. No other individuals were injured.

Odufuwa was charged with aggravated assault of a public servant, according to Garcia.

Odufuwa’s gun was not registered to her, and she is not allowed to own a firearm, according to Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia. Investigators are therefore trying to determine how she obtained the gun.

Odufuwa’s encounter with law enforcement was not her first. She has been charged with arson, robbery, criminal trespass, and false reporting in cities throughout North Texas during the past few years.

In several of those occurrences, judges found her incompetent to stand trial and sent her to either inpatient or outpatient mental health services, though the diagnoses that rendered these decisions are not clear. Those cases were dismissed, according to The Dallas Morning News, while the outcomes of several other charges against her are also unclear.

Additionally, she was declared not a danger to others by a Dallas County judge last summer.

In April 2021, Odufuwa reportedly became upset when a hotel clerk would not extend her stay. She was accused of pulling a fire alarm in front of the hotel front desk employee, according to Fox News. The woman reportedly gave police the address of rapper Chris Brown’s mansion as her home address and said she was the musician’s wife.

Still, Dallas County Judge Kristin Wade dismissed the false report case by November even though Odufuwa “did not successfully complete the program” at the time, according to the DMN. The plan was for her to continue receiving mental health care elsewhere.

When police were called to a house fire in Mesquite, Texas, in October 2019, Odufuwa was found outside watching the flames and was taken into custody. The woman reportedly admitted to police that she had set the house on fire on purpose and had done so previously several times without fully burning the house to the ground.

Odufuwa was also charged with robbing a Bank of America in Wylie, Texas, in April 2019 after barging in with a note demanding an unspecified sum of money.

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