Teen facing murder charge after victim shot at Dallas high school basketball game dies
A 15-year-old boy arrested in a shooting that broke out this month at a high school basketball game in Dallas is now facing a murder charge after one of the victims died from his wounds, police said.
The victim, 18-year-old Marc Strickland, died at 2:59 p.m. on Saturday, a week after being rushed to a hospital with a bullet wound to the chest, according to the Dallas Police Department.
Charges against the suspected gunman, whose name was not released because he is a juvenile, were upgraded to murder, police said in a statement.
Strickland was a former student in the Dallas Independent School District and had recently transferred to a charter school, Dallas education officials said.
The shooting unfolded on Jan. 11 during a game between South Oak Cliff and Kimball high schools, prompting players and coaches to duck for cover and fans to race for the exits, video of the incident showed.
A Dallas Independent School District police officer was grazed by a bullet when she attempted to confront the gunman, police said.
The shooting erupted at 9:10 p.m. inside the Ellis Davis Field House in southwest Dallas and followed a physical altercation in the stands, according to authorities. More than 600 people were at the game when it was interrupted by the gunfire, officials said.
The boy suspected of being the shooter surrendered to police the following evening after witnesses identified him through images captured by security cameras and released by police. The suspect was initially charged with two counts of aggravated assault.
Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, said the violence that erupted at the basketball game signaled the city's long-held "truce" that school sporting events and other extracurricular activities were off-limits as venues for settling feuds had been broken.
While expressing outrage over a surge in gun violence in the city, Hinojosa announced a series measures taken immediately to boost security at school sporting events, including instituting a ban on bags, purses and backpacks. He said spectators would have to either pass through metal detectors or be checked with metal-detecting wands before attending games.
Dallas has been reeling from a surge in deadly violence that included 210 homicides in 2019, 41 more than in 2018 and the most in a decade.
On Jan. 5, 1-year-old Rory Norman was shot to death when someone crept up to his bedroom window and opened fire with a rifle in what Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall described as a "targeted" shooting. The child was killed while asleep in his bed and his 20-year-old uncle, who was home from college for the holidays, was wounded, Hall said.
The gun violence at the basketball game mirrors a national trend of shootings at school sporting events. A investigation published in December by ABC News found that of the more than two dozen school shootings in the United States in 2019, 57.6% occurred at the end of or during sporting events, specifically basketball and football games.
