Tarrant County medical examiner identifies man killed in police standoff June 23
A man who authorities said died after he started a shootout June 23 with Tarrant County sheriff’s deputies serving an arrest warrant has been identified as Kemal Shea, 58, of Tarrant County.
Shea died after his mobile home caught fire during the incident, authorities said. An autopsy is pending to determine his cause of death.
Shea had previous criminal convictions, including on felony firearms charges, according to court records.
Deputies went to Shea’s mobile home in the 500 block of East Indian Creek Drive around 9:30 a.m. June 23 to serve a felony warrant against him on a charge of aggravated assault of a family member with a deadly weapon, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.
When deputies arrived, Shea opened fire on them from multiple sides of the home and they moved into defensive positions, according to the sheriff’s office. They tried to negotiate with the man and called in SWAT units.
After SWAT officers arrived and began tactical measures, Shea continued shooting and refused to come outside to surrender to law enforcement, authorities said.
An unknown number of officers returned fire at some point during the standoff, the sheriff’s office said.
During the standoff, Shea appeared to drop incendiary devices on the front porch of his home and they went off, causing the fire and injuring a deputy, according to the news release.
The suspect continued to refuse to come outside as the fire spread inside his home, sheriff’s office Chief of Staff Jennifer Gabbert told a Star-Telegram reporter at the scene.
Firefighters put out the fire, but the damage to the home was “extensive,” the sheriff’s office said.
According to federal court records, Shea was sentenced to two and a half years for illegally possessing a firearm after being convicted of another felony. Shea had been previously convicted of evading police, according to court records.
In Tarrant County in the late 1980s through the ‘90s, Shea was convicted of possession of a controlled substance, criminal trespassing, driving with a suspended license and theft between $20 and $200.
Andrew Brooks, an acquaintance of Shea who met him while working at an O’Reilly Autoparts store, described Shea as kind but scatterbrained.
He said Shea had a distaste for police after previous arrests but never seemed hateful toward anybody. Brooks said it was shocking to find out that Shea, who in some ways filled the role of a father figure for him, would do something like that.
Shea would sometimes refuse to return cars he’d worked on at his mobile home in the neighborhood in unincorporated Tarrant County, according to Brooks.
This story was originally published July 16, 2022 at 7:27 PM.