‘It’s got to stop’: Neighbor says months of parties, chaos preceded police shootings
Two related fatal shootings by police in Fort Worth on Saturday morning came after months of block parties and disturbances in the area, a resident of the neighborhood said.
The resident, Carolyn Green, said she had been trying to clean up her neighborhood for months prior to the overnight incident, which ended in a hail of gunfire on her front lawn in the 4200 block of Wiman Drive, in east Fort Worth.
At about midnight on Saturday as another block party was being held, residents in the area called police to report that shots were fired, Police Chief Eddie Garcia said. When officers arrived, they confronted an armed man and ordered him to drop his gun, Garcia said.
The man pointed his gun toward the officers, Garcia said, and at least one officer fired, shooting the man to death on Green’s lawn.
“I saw this guy in my front yard, laying there in the grass, and I picked up my phone to call the police, not realizing they were across the street, they were the ones that were involved in the shooting,” Green said. Minutes earlier, she had gotten out of bed after hearing a loud boom inside of her home, and found that her microwave was struck by a stray bullet from the incident.
The microwave, Green said, stopped the bullet from traveling any further into her home and potentially injuring her.
Prior to Saturday, there were dozens of events that drew crowds of hundreds to the next street over, Green said. During the events, which were usually advertised on social media, cars would jam up the road outside of her home and the revelers would leave yards on the block strewn with trash, including beer cans and used sanitary products, she said.
Loud music and random gunfire would make it impossible to sleep, leading Green to contact police about the parties at least four or five times prior to Saturday, she said.
Two people were killed at a Fourth of July block party near Castleman Street and Wiman Drive in 2024. That shooting didn’t involve police, though officers were called to help clear out a crowd of 200 to 300 people in the area, the Star-Telegram previously reported. At that time, residents said that even though police responded, they failed to disperse the crowd, and people eventually began shooting fireworks at homes on the street.
“Young people are going up and down the alleys and just shooting up in the air all the time, not just last night,” Green said. “So, when I heard the first shooting (on Saturday), I’m used to it, so I didn’t do anything.”
Even when police were called to the block parties, relief would last only about 10 or 20 minutes at a time until the ruckus picked back up, Green said, and oftentimes it takes a while for police to respond due to the low priority of noise complaints and reports of hearing gunfire.
“It’s unreal,” Green said. “It’s got to stop.”
The neighborhood association has gotten together to try and figure out how they can solve the problem on their own, and that’s helped cut down on trash and cars in the street, but Green says she’d like a higher police presence on her block.
“I’m not going to let that trash run me out of my house,” Green said. “I’ve been here too long.”
About four hours after the initial shooting, as officers worked to investigate the Wiman Drive scene, an SUV drove by multiple times at high speed, police said. The driver appeared to be trying to hit officers standing near their vehicles, Garcia said.
After a chase that lasted roughly 15 minutes, police used a patrol car to strike the SUV and stop it in the northbound lanes of Loop 820 near the East Lancaster Avenue exit. The driver of the SUV did not comply with police orders, grabbed an officer’s drawn handgun and was shot to death by police, according to Garcia.
A police spokesperson could not confirm whether the two men who were killed knew each other. They have not yet been publicly identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
During the chase, an officer was inured in an unknown manner and was taken to an area hospital in good condition, police said.
Major Case Unit detectives are investigating the shootings. The police department typically releases portions of body-worn camera videos to the public within a week of a shooting in which an officer shoots a civilian.
