Fort Worth police investigate death of man found off I-30 2 days after pedestrian crash
A man was found dead in east Fort Worth on Monday morning down the road from where a crash killed another pedestrian two nights earlier, and police are trying to determine whether the two deaths are connected.
A city employee found the man, identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office as Derrick Allen Swinney, 31, of Crowley, around 9:30 a.m. Monday in the grass between the East Loop 820 exit ramp and Interstate 30, according to Officer Jimmy Pollozani, a police spokesman. This is about two miles away from the 8300 block of I-30, where authorities said 21-year-old Thomas Meneklee Darkoma Jr. was struck by multiple vehicles and killed late Saturday night. Police had initially received a report of a man walking along I-30.
According to the medical examiner’s office, both men died of blunt-force injuries from being hit by vehicles.
Pollozani said in an email “an investigation will determine if this victim (found Monday) was struck at the same time as the event on Saturday night.”
“We are still waiting on the preliminary report to be sent from (Traffic Investigation Unit),” he said.
Officers on Saturday night were responding to the report of a wandering man, who was possibly intoxicated, when they got the word he had been hit by a vehicle, police said. They found Darkoma Jr. and later determined he had been hit several times by vehicles.
Police couldn’t immediately determine if he was intoxicated. They also couldn’t determine if the first vehicle that had hit him had stopped after the crash.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 11:17 AM.
