FORT WORTH, Texas — One person is dead and two others injured after a shooting at a prom afterparty in South Fort Worth Sunday.
Police have not identified the suspects, who fled the Singleleaf Lane scene before authorities arrived. The two injured survivors arrived to John Peter Smith Hospital in stable condition by private vehicle at about 1:15 a.m., officials said.
Fort Worth police say the third victim arrived at Harris Southwest Hospital in critical condition at about 2:15 a.m. He died Sunday afternoon. The medical examiner identified the man as 19-year-old Daniel Olalde Moreno.
The shooting happened outside a home where an Arlington Heights senior was hosting a prom afterparty. The student's mother, who was not at home during the event, spoke with WFAA Sunday.
The party was supposed to be small, she said, but someone shared the family's address on a social media page popular with Arlington Heights students. They do not know who made the post, but the woman estimates there were as many as 300 people at the home.
People who had dropped out of school or graduated also attended, the mother said. Members of that group, whom the family does not know, got into a fight after a game of dice, she said.
The hosts say they kicked the rowdy group out of the home, but that those people shot at each other after they returned to their cars.
It's not clear how many people had guns, but dozens of gunshots are audible in video taken by a neighbors' security camera and reviewed by WFAA. Students who were lingering outside the home scattered throughout the neighborhood after the shots.
"Immediately, I jumped up because there was commotion that followed the gunshots," said Eric Tatum, who lives across the street. "The sound, people screaming, and things of that nature."
Tatum said he peered out his front window and saw a young man taking cover on his porch. Tatum woke his wife and instructed her to remain in her room until police arrived.
By the time Tatum returned to the window, armed with his own weapon, the person had gone elsewhere.
"I thought, you know, they didn't hit anything and they didn't shoot in this direction," Tatum told WFAA, before pointing to a bullet hole in his garage door. "When I saw that, it made me think again, 'Oh, that was really kind of close.'"
Tatum said he noticed the hole Sunday morning while he was cleaning up trash from the party across the street. The bullet came to rest in the corner of Tatum's garage.
Empty liquor bottles remained on the road Sunday, along with two bullet shell casings. Police returned to the scene Sunday afternoon to collect the evidence.
"It just doesn't make sense," Tatum, a former law enforcement officer, said. "I can't wait to see it stop. I've been praying about that for a long time... You can disagree without being violently disagreeable."
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