Preston Center Shooting Has District 13 Residents Questioning Public Safety

A May 19 shooting at District 13’s Preston Center left a security guard dead less than three weeks after a massacre at Allen Premium Outlets that killed eight and injured seven. 

While North Texans have long been aware that car break-ins frequently occur in shopping center parking lots and garages, there’s a bigger public safety issue at stake as people are losing their lives. 

District 13 is represented by Gay Donnell Willis, who did not respond to CandysDirt.com’s request for an interview. The council member has not issued a public statement on the shooting death at Preston Center West. 

Willis, the former CEO of Turtle Creek Conservancy, won re-election earlier this month with 67.1 percent of the vote over political newcomer Priscilla Shacklett. 

District 13 Crime

The statistics displayed on the Dallas Police Department crime dashboard haven’t been updated since May 3, when the city’s servers were hacked by a cyberterrorist group called Royal. 

The stats don’t include the Preston Center West shooting, during which a man shot a security guard who confronted him while he was breaking into a vehicle. 

Adalberto Santiago, the 34-year-old security guard, died at the hospital following the incident, and the gunman got away. Police located the getaway car, a gold Toyota Camry, shortly after the shooting at a parking lot on North Cockrell Hill Road. 

Dallas Police Det. Jonequia Acrond, who is handling the case, did not respond to a request for more information. 

In the year to date from May 3, 2022, to May 3, 2023, the following categories of crime in District 13 saw increases: drug violations (16.3 percent), motor vehicle theft (10.4 percent), destruction of property/vandalism (16 percent), and assault (3.82 percent). 

There was just one homicide reported in the district thus far for 2023; zero were reported at this time last year. 

Decreases were reported in District 13 robberies (49 percent), sex offenses (35.7 percent), and forgery (58 percent) during the same time frame. 

Crime wasn’t all that high to begin with in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas. While crime is down almost 4 percent over this time last year, District 13 has one of the lowest crime rates in Dallas’ 14 districts, coming in with a slightly higher crime rate than the low-ranked Districts 9, 5, and 12. 

Preston Center Safety

Willis announced in her District 13 newsletter in March that Dallas Police Department nabbed a habitual offender targeting victims at the Preston Royal shopping center. The offender, who was not named in the newsletter, was charged with burglary of a motor vehicle, theft, credit card abuse, and evading arrest. 

Several other crime reports also are included in the March 2023 newsletter, the most recent one published by the District 13 councilwoman. It underscores that bad things can happen in good neighborhoods. 

“I used to joke that I grew up on the mean streets of Preston Center,” one Twitter user wrote after the May 19 security guard shooting. “Rode bikes throughout all the alleys and parking lots. It’s starting not to sound like a joke anymore.” 

Other residents commented, “I’m done with that shopping center” and “Have they caught the guy?”

Apparently, they have not caught the guy, and the story just fell off the radar. The Allen Premium Outlets shooting — not in Dallas, not in District 13 — involved a lot more victims and witnesses, resurrecting the never-really-gone discussion on gun violence, but the fear is the same. Why can we no longer safely take our families shopping in broad daylight in a clean, well-lit area in the “good part of town”?

We’ve examined in this series on crime by council district whether there’s a correlation to crime by socioeconomic status or race. Simply put, the data can be interpreted to suit any agenda, but it’s clear that crime is occurring throughout the city.

District 13 is one of just two Dallas City Council districts with more than 50 percent White residents (District 14 is the other), according to U.S. Census data. About 25 percent of District 13’s residents are Hispanic, 9 percent are Black, and 7 percent are Asian. 

Summer of Safety

The Dallas Police Department recently announced a new strategy to free up patrol officers in the midst of a major staffing shortage.

After the ransomware hack that took city webpages and dispatch centers offline for almost a week, residents are now being encouraged to use online reporting for some criminal offenses that don’t rank as high priorities, such as shoplifting, accidents with no injuries, and car break-ins where the suspect is no longer at the scene. 

Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune wrote in a May 12 memo to the Dallas City Council that rather than continue the practice of providing an option of using the Dallas Online Reporting System (DORS) for certain non-emergency reports, use of the online system is now required for those non-emergency offenses. 

In a presentation before the council’s Public Safety Committee, 911 Administrator Robert Uribe pointed to several other cities that use similar strategies, including Houston, Austin, and Fort Worth. 

“It is estimated that this change could free up approximately 135,000 patrol hours which is equivalent to the work of 65 full-time sworn officers,” Fortune said. 

Additionally, the Dallas Police Department and Mayor Eric Johnson’s “Summer of Safety” is an effort to provide free and low-cost activities to youth who are out of school “to stay safe while keeping cool, staying active, and expanding their knowledge.” 

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This is the 12th installment in our series on neighborhood crime by Dallas City Council district. Have you been the victim of a crime in a Dallas neighborhood or shopping center? Let us know about your experience at [email protected].