Police identify gunman who fired shots at Duncanville Fieldhouse youth summer camp
The gunman who fired shots at a Duncanville youth summer camp Monday morning and was killed by responding law enforcement has been identified as a 42-year-old man from Dallas.
Police identified the gunman as Brandon Keith Ned.
The 42-year-old entered the Duncanville Fieldhouse, at 1700 S. Main St., with a handgun shortly before 8:45 a.m. He walked into the facility through the front door and first fired a shot in the lobby of the building after exchanging words with a staff member, police said in a news conference Monday.
Within minutes, Ned continued inside the building, and fired one shot from outside a locked classroom into the room, where children were present but not injured, police said. Officers said they arrived at the scene about two minutes after they were called.
The suspect went to the gymnasium but didn’t fire any shots there until officers arrived, police said. Children were removed from the area before officers confronted Ned in the gym and exchanged gunfire with him, fatally wounding him, according to the police statement. He died after he was taken to a hospital.
The summer camp at the fieldhouse, a city-operated indoor sports and fitness center, has a daily average attendance of about 250 children ages 4-14 years old. Campers were locked in rooms after the initial report of shots fired and later evacuated from the building, authorities said.
No one other than Ned was injured during the incident. Police have not commented on a motive for the shooting.
“Due to the ongoing investigation being conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Duncanville Police Department will not be releasing any additional information about the suspect or the shooting incident at this time,” police said in a statement Tuesday.
According to KDFW-TV, Ned previously had been convicted of intoxication manslaughter, cocaine possession and unlawfully carrying a gun in Dallas County. Public records show those cases were filed between 1999 and 2011.
Ned pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter in 2011 and was sentenced to two years in prison, according to court records. He served his sentence on the cocaine possession charge at the same time, the Dallas Morning News reported.
A police report said Ned’s blood alcohol level was about twice the legal limit when he crashed his pickup truck, killing a 42-year-old man who was a passenger, according to the Morning News.
The Texas Rangers are investigating the shooting, which is standard practice when officers shoot someone, Duncanville police said.
Naomi Rodgers, 18, who was working at the fieldhouse as a camp counselor, told KXAS-TV on Monday that Ned fired a shot through her classroom door, which shattered the glass.
“He said if we didn’t let him see who he wanted to see he was going to shoot the place up,” Rodgers told KXAS. “The glass started to fall and I just started to pray then because that’s all I could do. I know what happened at Uvalde … and I was like this cannot happen. Not today. Not today.”
The shooting occurred less than three weeks after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.
“We obviously understand what took place south of us,” Duncanville Assistant Chief of Police Matthew Stogner said at a Monday news conference. “I can only talk about how we responded here, and we did an exceptional job.”
In a previous shooting at the fieldhouse in 2019, one person was wounded and one was arrested, WFAA-TV reported. Children were also present during that shooting, which was a domestic violence incident, according to WFAA.
Duncanville city officials said at Monday’s news conference that they upgraded security cameras and active shooter training after the 2019 incident.
Officials said they will again review how they can improve security at the fieldhouse after Monday’s shooting. There were no police officers at the fieldhouse when the gunman entered, WFAA reported.
The summer camp at the fieldhouse has been canceled until further notice.
Duncanville is in south Dallas County, about 30 miles east of Fort Worth.
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 1:10 PM.
