Fewer homicides in Fort Worth in 2022, but city still reaches triple-digit victim toll
The victims’ bodies were punctured by sharp force and absorbed blunt force, but most often they were shot to death.
They were left on a lake shore and in a crawl space, but most often they died inside hospitals.
They were at middleage and beyond — two were 70-year-old men — but most often they were at the beginning of their lives. At least 19 of them were not older than 18.
One of the homicide victims in Fort Worth last year was a boy who was 5.
In 2022, for the third consecutive year, there was a triple-digit homicide total in Fort Worth.
With 100 criminal killing victims, the number of homicides in the city last year decreased by 15% from 2021, when there was a 27-year record high total, 118, and decreased by 13% from 2020, when 115 people were slain in Fort Worth.
Still, the triple-digit homicide total is a marker that violent crime remains an imposing problem in the city. Until 2020, there had not in Fort Worth been a homicide toll of 100 or more in a year since 1995, when there were 108 victims. From 2000 to 2010, there were between 46 and 66 homicides each year.
Among the juvenile victims was Edwin Flores Jr., a 15-year-old student who was shot in the head while he was in his bed in the city’s Poly section in January 2022. The case, in which the assailant fired inside the house from a vehicle, has not been cleared.
Police described the motivations of the killings that occurred between January and September. The most common known circumstances for homicides during that period were an argument or fight (22) and domestic conflict (20).
Extralegal revenge appears to have motivated one of the slayings.
In July, Bryce Long shot Mia Rhodes dead as she was in the driver’s seat of her car at an east Fort Worth intersection, according to the police account of the slaying described in an affidavit supporting a murder arrest warrant for Long. Rhodes had, with two other people, been charged with murder in the death several months earlier of Rhodes’ boyfriend, Jordan Harris. Long and Harris were cousins.
The highest number of victims killed at the same time in 2022 in Fort Worth was four. Three 17-year-old boys and a 19-year old man were shot to death in October inside a sport utility vehicle in the Morningside section.
Police arrested Demaris Robinson, 18, in connection with the case, and the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office charged him with capital murder in the killing of Marc Boyd, one of the victims. A robbery of drugs motivated the quadruple homicide, police have said.
In April, the police department said its goal was to reduce violent crime by 10% in the 12 months that followed the announcement.
The department would direct efforts to drug houses, illegal game rooms and open-air drug markets, Police Chief Neil Noakes has said.
Last week, a department spokesperson said that its strategy, known as Fort Worth Safe, “was successful in 2022 due to the hard work and outstanding efforts of FWPD Officers and professional staff. Our success would not have been possible without our community members who supported us and worked with us as we sought out the people responsible for committing violent crimes in our city.”
In a statement, the spokesperson wrote that the department “is committed to continue to combat violent crime and work alongside our community members in this effort so that we can all can have a safe environment [in which] to live, work, and play.”
Eighty-five percent of the victims in 2022 were shot, according to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram analysis of Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office data. Other victims died of stab wounds or another sharp force injury (10%) or blunt force injury (3%).
Medial examiner’s office data was available for 94 of the homicides.
Fifty-seven percent of the victims were Black, 22% were Hispanic, 15% were white, 4% were Asian and 1% were Native American.
Eighty-one of the victims were male, and 13 were female.
In July and August, there were in each month more homicide victims, 12, than in any other. There were two homicides in December, the fewest in a month.
There were bursts of violence in which more than one person was shot to death at the same time and location. Beyond the quadruple homicide in the 1200 block of Jessamine Street, there were five double homicides in Fort Worth last year.
The clearance rate for 2022 homicides was 78%, the police department said.
In Arlington in 2022, there were 16 homicide victims in 14 cases. There were 19 criminal killing victims in that city in 2021. The Arlington Police Department said that it cleared 12 of the 2022 cases.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office reported one homicide in 2022.
In Dallas, there was a reduction of violent crime of about 5% in 2022 compared to 2021 and a reduction of about 12% compared to 2020, city statistics showed.
This story was originally published January 12, 2023 at 8:00 PM.
