Dashcam Captures Fort Worth Officer in Armed Suspect Confrontation | Texas

FORT WORTH, TEXAS — May 19.

At first, the scene looked like an ordinary traffic stop.

A patrol vehicle followed a black Nissan through a residential area of Fort Worth. The streets were quiet. Houses lined the road. There was no obvious sign that the next few seconds would turn into a gunfight.

Then the Nissan stopped.

The driver stepped out.

For a brief moment, the officer had every reason to believe the encounter might be under control.

Instead, the suspect opened fire.

What followed was a violent exchange of gunfire, a damaged patrol vehicle, a wounded officer who initially believed he had been shot, and a pursuit that continued even after the officer himself had been attacked.

The suspect would eventually be found hiding at a home in neighboring Arlington.

And nearly two years later, the case would end with a jury sending him to prison for 26 years.

This is the story behind the dashcam footage.

A Shooting the Night Before

The chain of events began one evening earlier.

On May 18, 2024, Fort Worth police were investigating a shooting near the 4800 block of Miller Avenue.

According to police and surveillance footage later released, a man was seen shooting another man in the shoulder before leaving the area in a vehicle.

Investigators began working to identify the shooter and the vehicle involved.

The following day, officers were still looking for that vehicle.

Then a license-plate alert provided a crucial lead.

A Fort Worth officer located the suspect vehicle and began following it.

The officer was not simply making a random traffic stop. Police believed the vehicle was connected to the shooting investigation from the previous night.

And now the officer was directly behind it.

The encounter was about to change in seconds.

The Traffic Stop

It was around 8:19 p.m. on May 19.

The officer activated his emergency equipment.

The Nissan stopped on South Edgewood Terrace.

The dashcam captured what happened next.

The suspect, later identified as 33-year-old Devoreia Thompson, got out of the vehicle.

From the footage, the officer could be heard giving commands and asking Thompson to show his hands.

For a moment, Thompson appeared to comply.

Then everything changed.

According to police, Thompson suddenly produced a firearm and began firing at the officer.

There was almost no time to react.

The officer was standing beside his patrol vehicle when the gunfire erupted.

The patrol vehicle became the officer's immediate protection.

And the dashcam captured the violent exchange from only a short distance away.

The Gunfire

Several shots were fired.

The officer returned fire.

Glass shattered.

Fragments and debris flew through the patrol vehicle.

In the chaos, the officer believed he had been struck by gunfire.

He was bleeding and had suffered injuries to his arm.

But at that moment, he could not know exactly what had happened.

Was it a bullet?

Was he seriously wounded?

Or was the blood coming from something else?

There was no time to stop and find out.

The suspect jumped back into the Nissan and accelerated away.

The officer was now faced with another split-second decision.

The person who had just opened fire was getting away.

And the officer went after him.

He Thought He Had Been Shot

One of the most striking parts of the footage is what happens after the gunfire.

The officer communicates over the radio and indicates that he may have been hit.

From his perspective, that was a very real possibility.

His patrol vehicle had been struck.

Glass had shattered.

He had been under sustained gunfire.

And yet, instead of immediately stopping, the officer continued following the suspect.

The pursuit moved through Fort Worth streets as the Nissan disappeared ahead.

The officer continued providing information over the radio while trying to keep up.

The dashcam shows the suspect vehicle's taillights ahead as the patrol car follows.

But the pursuit would not last forever.

The patrol vehicle had taken too much damage.

After approximately a mile, it became disabled.

The officer could no longer continue the chase.

The suspect had escaped—for the moment.

The Injury Wasn't What He Thought

Later, investigators learned something important.

The officer had not been struck by a bullet.

His injuries were caused by flying glass and debris from the damaged patrol vehicle.

He was treated for cuts and transported to a hospital.

Thankfully, his injuries were not life-threatening, and he was released from the hospital.

But the fact that he had continued pursuing the suspect after believing he had been shot became one of the most notable aspects of the incident.

Fort Worth police later described the encounter as extremely dangerous and emphasized the officer's decision to continue trying to locate the suspect.

The Suspect Wasn't Gone

The disabled patrol vehicle may have ended the immediate pursuit.

But it did not end the investigation.

Other officers continued working to locate the suspect.

Investigators traced the vehicle to a residence in Arlington, several miles away.

The Nissan was found at a home in the 5500 block of Summit Ridge Trail.

Police established a perimeter around the property.

Then officers spotted Thompson.

He ran from the main house toward a shed in the backyard.

This time, he would not get away.

Fort Worth SWAT officers moved in and took him into custody without further incident.

The confrontation that had begun with a traffic stop and erupted into gunfire was finally over.

But officers then discovered another important detail.

Thompson had been shot in the lower back.

He was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The Investigation Expands

Once Thompson was in custody, investigators began putting the entire sequence together.

Police had the original shooting from May 18.

They had surveillance footage.

They had the license-plate information.

They had the officer's dashcam.

They had the damaged patrol vehicle.

And they had the evidence from the gunfight.

The case eventually resulted in charges of aggravated assault against a public servant, along with charges connected to the earlier shooting.

The Fort Worth Police Department later released footage showing the confrontation, giving the public an opportunity to see how quickly a seemingly controlled traffic stop had escalated.

The officer involved had more than a decade of law-enforcement experience and had been with Fort Worth police for roughly a year and a half at the time of the incident.

What the Dashcam Reveals

Watching the footage, the most important detail is not simply the sound of gunfire.

It is how quickly the situation changes.

One moment, the officer is approaching a stopped vehicle.

The next, he is under fire.

There is no lengthy warning.

No obvious transition from routine conversation to violence.

The suspect exits the vehicle, and within moments, shots are being exchanged.

That is what makes police dashcam footage so revealing.

It places the viewer inside the sequence of events.

You can see the vehicle.

You can see the suspect.

You can see the officer's position.

And then, suddenly, the entire situation changes.

The footage also illustrates something that can easily be missed when watching a shooting from a distance: an officer does not necessarily know immediately whether he has been wounded.

In this case, the officer believed he had been shot.

He was bleeding.

His vehicle was damaged.

Yet he continued pursuing the suspect until the damage to his patrol car made further pursuit impossible.