DALLAS — The suspect in a series of rush-hour shootings in Dallas is a former Utah state trooper who shot and injured himself after a standoff with officers, Dallas police said Tuesday.
At a news conference, Dallas police said they think 37-year-old ex-trooper Brian Smith was responsible for at least one death that resulted from the shootings. Dallas police declined to comment on a second death in neighboring Garland because it was outside their jurisdiction.
Smith was in critical condition at a Dallas hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A spokesman with the Utah Department of Public safety says Smith had been a trooper since 1996 but resigned in May because of “personal issues.”
He was wanted in Texas on robbery and burglary warrants and had been pulled over by police Tuesday in connection with those warrants when the standoff occurred. Officers surrounded Smith’s pickup, but when they approached, a gunshot was heard inside.
Before Smith’s standoff with police, two people were fatally shot and a third was injured in four rush-hour shootings Monday evening along or near Dallas-area highways. Police said the victims appeared to have been selected at random.
The first shooting happened in Garland when the pickup driver pulled up alongside a small Nissan stopped at a red light and began shooting, Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said. The Nissan’s driver, 20-year-old Jorge Lopez of Rowlett, was killed.
Witnesses told police the pickup then drove off toward Interstate 635 in Dallas, where shots were fired at an 18-wheeler a short time later. The driver of the 18-wheeler, identified by police as Kenneth Black Harly, was not hurt.
Minutes later on the same highway, a gunman shot and killed 42-year-old William Scott Miller, the driver of a United Van Lines rig, police Lt. Craig Miller said. Police said the driver, who was about to fly home to his wife and two young daughters in Frankfort, Ky., for the holidays, was able to stop his truck safely before he died.
