FOX 4 News Crime Files: Week of December 17

Police say they found a man parked outside of a White Settlement fast food joint with a dead body in his passenger seat. The discovery happened late last night. Police now believe the body was a pedestrian that man hit earlier in the night. Fox 4's Amelia Jones is live with more on the investigation. Amelia? Blake, White Settlement police say the driver sat in that fast food restaurant parking lot for three hours before someone else called 911. When police got there, they found the lifeless body in the passenger seat and slowly started to piece together what happened. Around 11.15 Saturday night, White Settlement police got a call to check on a driver at a Jack in the Box off I-30. And the call was simply, hey, there looks like a crashed car and the driver slumped over the wheel. Police realized the driver, 31-year-old Nestor Joel Lujan Flores, was impaired. The officer used a flashlight to check the car and found the lifeless body of a man in the passenger seat. Flores told police he thought he hit a deer in Dallas. A little bit of confusion at the scene. Again, he didn't know where he was at. And he thinks he struck an animal when in reality we know now it was a pedestrian. Dallas County Sheriff deputies found human body parts at I-30 and Cockrell Hill Road. Police believe this is where the crash happened and the impact forced the victim into the passenger seat. Flores then drove 40 miles to the restaurant parking lot with the man's body inside the car. Reviewing video, he actually pulled into the parking lot around 8 p.m. So that means he had stayed at our Jack in the Box for 3 hours and 13 minutes before we get our first call. Police have some idea of his movements before the crash. A Flock camera shows Flores in his car, not wrecked, at 6 p.m. at the intersection of East Mayfield and New York Avenue in Arlington. So from 6.01 p.m., we believe he traveled into Dallas County, was likely involved in a collision there at I-30, Cockrell Hill, and then gets in our city around 8 o'clock. According to police records, in 2021, Flores was arrested and convicted of driving while intoxicated in Collin County. White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook says in his two decades of policing, he's never seen a case like this. These types of cases are very frustrating to our team because not only is it traumatic to see the trauma to a human body like this, but we know these kind of things are avoidable. Flores is still being held at the White Settlement Jail until charges are filed in Dallas County where the initial crash happened. The victim's identity, however, has not been released yet. Blake, back to you. Alright, Amelia, thanks. Dallas police say a deadly shooting that happened in the middle of rush hour in a busy area of Dallas was a targeted shooting, but they still have not identified a suspect. Police released photos, though, of a gunman, a man holding a rifle, wearing gloves, a mask, a hoodie. That person is still at large. Police say they do not believe there's a greater danger to the public. Fox 4's David Centendry reports. Dallas Police Department hopes surveillance images it's releasing helps reveal the identity of the person who shot and killed a 46-year-old Army veteran in Uptown Dallas Wednesday afternoon. Maybe it's the shoes, maybe it's the jacket. Take a close look at the gunman's shoes. He's also wearing a neon vest over a hooded jacket. He's wearing latex gloves, a mask. Police believe he intentionally killed Roderick Butler. The question is, why? Mr. Butler was targeted by this suspect. Police do not have information to release about exactly why Butler was targeted or why the masked and hooded gunman is not considered a threat to the community. Is there any information you can share about why you know it was targeted? Did he, you know, say something that was caught on, you know, surveillance where it showed that they knew each other? Was there any sort of messages exchanged beforehand? So, that's part of the ongoing investigation. The shooting happened in front of a Wells Fargo bank and ATM on McKinney Avenue. But Dallas Police believe the shooting was not related to any activity at the bank. A busy gas station and other businesses are nearby. There's not a danger to the public. This is isolated and that he was targeted for some reason. Investigators are gathering surveillance footage from the area to track the moments leading up to the shooting and afterward. It was just tough to deal with. On Thursday, Fox 4 spoke with Butler's family. Butler's mother says the two spoke every day, including the day he was killed. She says he was medically discharged from the Army. He suffered from mental health issues and throughout the years had been homeless. She says he moved into an apartment less than two years ago. And sometimes he'd just get out and he'd walk and uptown was one of the places he would really like to go. In Dallas, David Centendry, Fox 4 News. Dramatic police video shows just how quickly a burglary investigation turned violent. Hello, everybody. I'm Heather Hayes. So it became a shootout between three Fort Worth police officers and a man they detained for questioning. Police say that suspect later killed himself. Fox 4's Dianne Anglin in Fort Worth with the update. Dianne. Hi there, Will. Police revealed that body cam video today. And they say an investigation that is ongoing will determine if the officers responded appropriately. Chief Neil Noakes, after sharing that video, insists, in his opinion, they did. A commercial burglar alarm on North Beach Street, December 12th, led to this confrontation between officers and the now deceased suspect, 35-year-old Shane Miller. It was just after 9 p.m. The body camera view shows Miller responding to questions, cooperating and interacting until... He takes off running and, according to police, starts firing at them with a handgun, they point out here, visible in the shadows. But it was very dangerous. It was very dynamic. It was a running gun battle, basically. Of the four officers in the foot chase with Miller, three fired their service weapons. One initially used a taser, but police say it was not effective. The officers' adrenaline escalates as they return fire, yelling at one another to watch out for innocent civilians or vehicles. Eventually, they lose sight of Miller. From the three officers that fired, one fired 18 rounds, one fired 7 rounds, one fired 2 rounds, and the suspect fired 10 rounds. Police shared several body camera perspectives, including this. The suspect, located once again, crosses a service road at Highway 121, then trips and falls near a drainage area. When he sits up, he puts the gun to his own head and fires. He died a short time later at a hospital. An investigation continues, including how traumatizing the incident was overall. These officers are just trying to investigate a potential property crime. We're immediately faced with a deadly threat situation. This is not anything any officer ever wants to face, but we're making sure they have the resources that they need to process this. Now, as for what may have prompted the suspect to run rather than fully comply, police say they are looking into that, but one possible factor at the time of the incident, he did have an outstanding warrant relating to a drug possession case. Police in the colony west of Plano are looking for a man who broke into a small auto dealership right before the holidays. Surveillance video from the JC Auto Sales on Main Street shows a man breaking the glass door. He then gets inside and goes straight for the keys. Fox 4's Peyton Yeager has the story. Peyton. Heather, the break-in happened exactly one week ago from tonight. Now, that surveillance video, it captures the burglar outside scoping the car dealership lot and then also inside the building. So this family-owned business is hoping somebody recognize him and calls police. December is busy season at JC Auto Sales in the colony, but a recent break-in has the family-owned business baffled. I mean, we have the cash register and he didn't even try to like go towards it or open it at all. Surveillance video shows a young man scoping out the dealership just past 10 p.m. on December 15th. First, he tries to break into a Kia for sale on the lot. He actually managed to break the handle and then here you can see, especially up here where he tried to use like a prying tool to pry it open. 30 minutes later, the burglar throws a rock to shatter the front window of the business. He reaches in, unlocks the door and walks inside. The burglar flips on the lights and heads straight to the collection of keys hanging on the wall, but quickly gave up when he realized they weren't car keys. Nothing was stolen. I guess he assumed that the car keys would be there. Colony police still searching for the man, now investigating fingerprints when the burglar tried to turn off the alarm system. Cities across the United States are seeing a staggering increase in auto thefts. North Texas is no exception. The city of Dallas alone saw nearly 20,000 stolen cars this year. Having been here for so long, he has a relationship with the community. Natalie Cantu says her father moved from Mexico to North Texas in the mid-90s. His dream, to start his own business, building it from the ground up. Knowing that somebody would purposefully want to harm his business and everything that he's worked for, it's just disheartening. The Cantus also tell me they do not recognize this man and they do not believe he's a customer at the shop. Now the colony police, they tell me tonight, they are still investigating. Again, no one is in custody. Heather? All right, Peyton Yeager live tonight. Thank you. An arrest has been made in the murder of a store clerk in southeast Dallas last week, but for the family of Michael Pearson, who lost his life, there is no solace. Fox 4's Sean Rabb reports. You have a person at work doing what they're supposed to be doing, trying to build a life for themselves, and somebody shoots them for no reason. No reason is good enough to take somebody's life. 31-year-old Michael Pearson murdered December 14th while working at this Dollar General on Beltline in the Riley community, southeast Dallas. He was caring. He was loving. His family, enduring emotions they cannot escape. I have to say over and over in my head, I lost my brother to gun violence. You know, and that hurts on a whole other level. Michael Pearson always positive, the oldest of three brothers. Not only did he always try to make people feel good about themselves, but he did us too. He was very proud of his family, his brothers. He took his big brother role seriously. Not only a big brother, a father to a 10-year-old son. My kids don't know what it feels like to not have a dad. But my grandson will feel that way, and it wasn't supposed to be like that. Pearson at work when a man with a gun entered the store about 5.40 last Thursday evening. Police say Pearson did nothing wrong. I don't wish this pain on anybody, especially when they were innocently at work just trying to make a living. Balloons blowing the wind outside the store still closed. What happened here has opened a wound in the heart of the Pearsons. There is nothing that can take this pain away. Our circle has been broken. I don't know this guy. I don't even know his name. Don't know what he looked like. But that night he had the power to change everybody in this room's life. My nephew's life. While the family knows that justice will come, they also know that something has to change, change across our community and our society, where lives seemingly no longer matter. Sean Rabb, Fox 4 News. And we can tell you, late this afternoon, U.S. Marshals announced the suspect, Kimon Rudd of Arlington, has been captured in Tennessee. He was tracked down with the cooperation of the North Texas Fugitive Task Force and U.S. Marshals. He's in jail in Tennessee and will be transported back here to North Texas.