A Dallas ISD police officer was shot and wounded in North Dallas after stopping to help a man in crisis, officials said at a news conference. The officer was identified as Justin Jones, 39, who has served with the Dallas Independent School District Police Department for 16 years and is assigned to W.T. White High School. He was taken to Parkland Hospital, where he underwent surgery, with officials describing his condition as having improved to stable.
According to the account given by Dallas police, the officer was flagged down on the interstate by someone who reported that a person was walking on the freeway and was having some problems. The Dallas ISD officer moved to help, working to get the person off the freeway and away from the danger of the passing interstate traffic before the situation escalated into violence.
After getting the man off the freeway, the officer drove him to a nearby parking lot for safety. That parking lot was at a Sam's Club, close to where Interstate 35 crosses the 635 freeway in North Dallas, next to a Walmart and a residential neighbourhood. It was there, in the parking lot, that the encounter turned into a shooting a short time later.
Officials said that as the officer was trying to talk to the man, who was getting out of the car, the shooting occurred and the officer was struck. They confirmed that the person the officer had been helping was the one who shot him. Chief Martinez of the Dallas ISD Police stressed that the officer was on duty at the time, correcting earlier accounts, and had been trying to help a person in crisis when he was shot. The suspect was taken into custody.
Another officer who arrived on the scene provided life-saving measures to the wounded officer, using a tourniquet, which officials said was exactly what officers are trained to do. Earlier reporting had indicated the officer was struck by a bullet in the upper part of the leg and was awake, conscious and breathing when he was taken to Parkland's trauma center for surgery.
At the briefing, officials thanked the surgeons at Parkland and a long list of agencies that responded to the scene, including Dallas Police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Dallas Fire Rescue, DART, the ATF, the Dallas Sheriff's Office and the Dallas City Marshal's Office. The Special Investigations Unit of the Dallas Police Department is leading the investigation, and officials asked the community to keep the wounded officer and his family in their thoughts.