2 teens arrested after string of shootings at Arlington home, police say
Arlington police have arrested two teens in connection with five targeted shootings of the same home within the past two and a half weeks.
The department believes the pair “have been shooting at a residence in the 800 block of Medina Drive,” Chief Al Jones announced in a tweet on Friday morning. The motive was possibly a social media feud, Jones said. No one has been injured in the shootings.
Tyxavion Pimpleton, 18, and Brian Lawrence, 19, were both charged with one count of deadly conduct, police spokesman Tim Ciesco said in an email on Friday. Those charges are in connection to the most recent shooting, which occurred on Monday, Ciesco said. Additional charges for possible involvement in other shootings are pending the outcome of the investigation.
Ciesco said he couldn’t be too specific on the potential motive, since there are many details that haven’t been verified, but noted police are looking into social media posts that could have sparked this. He also added “we don’t have any evidence to suggest this was a hate crime motivated by the victim’s race or ethnicity.”
One of the homeowners told KXAS-TV he’s Muslim.
Ciesco told the Star-Telegram, “It is highly unusual and highly concerning to see one home targeted like this over such a short span of time.”
“Throughout this investigation, our Gun Crimes Unit has worked tirelessly to identify and arrest the suspects,” Ciesco said. “And it’s due in large part to their efforts that we were able to get to this point today.”
Police initially reported there were four separate incidents between March 19 and Monday. Arrest warrants for the two suspects, however, show there were five late night or early morning shootings on five dates — March 19, 26, 27 and 29, as well as Monday.
Ciesco said in an email on Friday that police responded to the incidents on March 19, 26 and 27 and on April 5 because there were 911 reports. But one of the victims reviewed his own surveillance footage, Ciesco said, and discovered an additional incident occurred on March 29.
“We here in the Media Unit were not aware of that bit of information until we saw the affidavits this morning,” Ciesco said. “That is why we reported only four shootings.”
The warrants, provided by police, include details of each shooting, which played out similarly over the past three weeks. In each incident, documents show, at least one bullet went into the home, and in one case a bullet was recovered from a printer.
The first incident occurred around 12:15 a.m. on March 19, when someone called 911 to say they heard seven to 10 gunshots. A nearby surveillance camera captured a dark-colored sedan fleeing the scene, the warrants show.
The second incident, on March 26, was reported around 1:40 a.m., and officers later recovered nine shell casings from the street, according to the warrants. The third shooting happened the next day around 11:45 p.m., documents show, again sending bullets into the walls of the home. In both cases, the same suspect vehicle from the first incident was captured by a nearby surveillance camera.
The homeowners installed their own security camera after the third incident, the warrants show. After gunmen shot at the home for third time around 11:40 p.m. on March 29, one of the homeowners pulled up the surveillance footage. A gunshot could be heard and a vehicle could be seen speeding away.
On Monday, around 11:30 p.m., two young men — one with a shotgun and one with a pistol — began firing at the home. Surveillance video showed them running away when one of the men begins to fall, extending a hand onto the hood of a parked vehicle to gain balance, the warrants show. Officers later pulled fingerprints from the vehicle.
The Arlington police crime scene unit on Tuesday confirmed the right index finger from the recovered fingerprint belonged to Pimpleton, according to the warrants.
Pimpleton was arrested on Thursday and brought to Arlington City Jail, where he was interviewed. He confessed to shooting the shotgun on Monday night, according to the warrants, and stated Lawrence — known to him as “Big G” — fired the pistol.
Officers confirmed his identity with Pimpleton, pulling up social media pages and arrest records, and later arrested him, police said.
A man who lives in the home told KXAS-TV he had lived there for a dozen years with his 85-year-old grandmother, and had gotten no sleep in recent weeks. He said to the station he had no idea who could be targeting them.
Arlington police sent out increased patrols to that neighborhood in recent weeks, the department said.
Jones said in his tweet on Friday that detectives were working to determine if anyone else was involved in the shootings.
This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 1:18 PM.
