By Chase Rogers

Source The Dallas Morning News

A Dallas police officer shot four rounds toward a fellow officer in plainclothes after mistaking him for an armed threat against a vehicle-theft suspect at the end of a police pursuit in North Dallas, Chief Daniel Comeaux said.

Comeaux described Thursday's friendly-fire close call as "something you never want to have," chalking it up to a lapse in judgment during a high-stress encounter. No one was injured, and the theft suspect was arrested.

"When you talk about a 'blue on blue' shooting, it's unfortunate," the chief said at a Monday news conference at Jack Evans Police Headquarters, where the department showed edited footage from two police shootings last week. "It happened. It's something we're going to get better at."

Comeaux said footage of the encounter — the department's ninth police shooting this year and the first of two unrelated shootings by officers on consecutive days — would be incorporated into training.

"In a perfect world, for me," he said while fielding questions from reporters, "if the covert officer would have stayed in the car and laid down, it would have been perfect."

Both shootings remain under investigation. Comeaux's remarks appeared to acknowledge a tactical error in the first shooting before a full review was complete.

Together, last week's shootings pushed the department total to 10 this year, surpassing the eight reported in all of 2025. One of this year's shootings involved an off-duty Dallas officer in Addison.

Police identified the officer who fired as Celso Rocha, who has been with the department since April 2009. Two staff members from the city's Office of Community Police Oversight were in Rocha's car for a ride-along when the shooting occurred.

Police did not identify the plainclothes officer. Edited footage shows him running across a home's front yard with his gun drawn and behind a tree for cover during the gunfire, his face digitally obscured.

In the unrelated case Friday, an officer fired once at a fleeing man after police said he stabbed a woman he had been dating. The shot missed, and officers arrested the man the next day at a northeast Dallas convenience store.

'Blue, blue, blue'

The first encounter began about 9:10 a.m. Thursday, when officers responded to a reported robbery at a business in east Oak Cliff.

A woman had parked her Porsche SUV outside the business in the 3500 block of Sunnyvale Street with her 9-year-old daughter inside. Deputy Chief William Griffith said a man later identified as Renard McFadden, 39, arrived in a stolen Ford pickup, approached the Porsche and threatened the girl while indicating that he was armed.

The girl ran into the business to alert her mother, police said. When the woman confronted McFadden, he again indicated that he had a weapon before driving away in the Porsche.

The woman tracked the stolen SUV through an app and shared its location with police. Officers from several patrol divisions and a covert unit, assisted by a police helicopter, followed the Porsche to the 5800 block of Williamstown Road about an hour after the initial call.

Footage from the police helicopter shown Monday captured two unmarked vehicles involved in the pursuit. One was positioned in front of the SUV as marked police vehicles followed behind.

Audio from Rocha's dashboard camera captured an officer ordering McFadden to raise his hands and step out slowly. Moments before the SUV's door opens, the armed plainclothes officer enters the frame.

As the plainclothes officer crosses the yard, Rocha fires four times, missing him.

"Blue, blue, blue," another officer shouts from a distance, alerting the officers that the man was one of their own. Rocha repeats the warning, the footage shows.

McFadden then steps out of the SUV with his hands raised and dives to the grass to surrender.

He faces three charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, along with charges of robbery, unauthorized use of a vehicle and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, according to Dallas County jail records.

It was not clear Monday whether McFadden had an attorney.

The two staff members from the Office of Community Police Oversight who were in the car with Rocha on a ride-along at the time of the shooting were not injured, said Michele Andre, the office's director.

"The Office of Community Police Oversight staff routinely participate in ride-alongs across patrol divisions to enhance our understanding of the Dallas Police operations," Andre said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News.

Chief 'fully supportive' of second shooting