A dispute aboard a DART bus escalated into a running shootout Tuesday in Richardson. The assailant and a bystander were killed, and two other people, including a police officer, were wounded.
Police said this, the fourth outburst of fatal violence near a DART station since November, began shortly after 3:30 p.m. when a man tried to board a bus, possibly without a proper pass, at the Arapaho Center Station.
"Obviously, he had an issue with the driver," Richardson police Sgt. Kevin Perlich said Tuesday as the station behind him lay surrounded in police tape and circled by news helicopters.
"We're not sure how it escalated to this point."
The man didn't leave the bus until the driver flagged down a DART officer, Perlich said. The man then fled into an underground pedestrian tunnel, resurfacing at the light-rail platform on the other side of North Greenville Avenue.
When the officer caught up to the man at the platform, the man pulled a gun and began shooting and the officer returned fire, Perlich said.
Police said the man shot the officer in the shoulder, a non-life-threatening injury. But they were unsure how two other men on the platform were shot.
"It's unclear if the suspect intentionally shot them or they were caught in the crossfire," Perlich said.
One of the men, identified by his family as Eric Thomas Johnson, 42, died at a hospital.
Johnson's father believed he had been waiting to catch a train or bus to go play basketball.
As the wounded officer reportedly tried to help the two injured men on the platform, the gunman ran back across Greenville Avenue and into a Vent-A-Hood warehouse a few hundred yards from the station.
Employees rushed out of the warehouse as other officers rushed in. Witnesses soon heard a second volley of gunfire.
"My first thought was to get out of there, but I kind of crept closer to see what was going on," Vent-A-Hood employee Sinclair Williams told WFAA-TV (Channel 8). "I saw a motorcycle police officer with his motorcycle uniform on -- helmet and all -- with his 9 mm gun drawn, pointed at the suspect.
"That's when I heard four gunshots."
The gunman, believed to be in his mid-20s, was shot in the head inside the warehouse. Police said they didn't know who fired the fatal shot.
The company said all of its employees made it out safely.
DART canceled all light-rail stops at the station Tuesday evening while at least two dozen police cars flooded the scene, closing down part of Greenville Avenue and most of the station.
DART officials, meanwhile, defended the transit agency's safety record despite this and other recent acts of violence.
"I don't really know what can be done; you have a right to carry in the state of Texas," spokesman Mark Ball told KTVT-TV (Channel 11). "If there is anything in the future that we can possibly do, we'll do it."
The agency had promised to ramp up security after a string of fatalities on or near its property in recent months.
At the Arapaho station Tuesday night, as police and witnesses congregated across the parking lot, bus passengers discussed the day's events.
Among them was Cathy Bentz of Garland, a regular rider waiting to catch her fourth bus that day.
She was unshaken, even as she learned details of the shootout.
"Something like that could happen anywhere," she said. "On a car, in a plane, even just going for a walk."
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
