Heaps of flowers and cards lay atop a police car set up as a memorial outside the south central police substation on Saturday. Throughout the morning and afternoon, people trickled in to pay their respects to a fallen Dallas police officer.
Darron Burks, 46, was fatally shot while sitting in his patrol vehicle Thursday night. He graduated from the police academy in December, records show. Before that, he was a teacher.
Jasmine Clewis, a former student of his, walked up to the car at the substation, tying two purple, star-shaped balloons around a side mirror. Burks taught her how to pray, how to think, how to keep calm, Clewis said.
”The way he taught, that stuff can apply to your everyday life,” she said. ”I feel like I took away not just skill in the classroom, but a way to carry myself and have something to carry on with the rest of my life and share it with my kids and anybody else I come in contact with.”
A 30-year-old gunman, Corey Cobb-Bey, “executed” Burks within seconds of approaching his patrol vehicle Thursday night, Dallas police Chief Eddie García said at a news conference Friday afternoon.
Cobb-Bey wounded Senior Cpls. Jamie Farmer and Karissa David, who responded to the scene, police said. Farmer was shot in the leg, treated at a hospital and released. David was shot in the face and was still hospitalized in critical condition Friday but listed as stable.
Hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight vigil to honor Burks on Friday evening at the For Oak Cliff community center, where, less than 24 hours earlier, Burks was fatally shot during a break between assignments.
Candles — many of which were left from the vigil the night before — along with flowers, were left in a parking space at the community center. Visitors, arriving to pay their respects to Burks, trickled in Saturday morning.
‘May God be with you all’
Jillian Mitchell, an Oak Cliff resident, left balloons and a note on a light pole nearby. She showed up to let people, especially police, know that “we do care. It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but we do.”
The note: “We appreciate our men and women in blue. Not all is bad. May God be with you all. Amen.”
Saturday afternoon at the substation, three wooden crosses leaned on the driver’s side of the car on display.
The tallest cross had Burks’ name, and the day he was killed — Aug. 29, 2024 — etched atop. Burned-out candles, along with one purple one, still burning, sat on the concrete between the crosses. They were next to a pair of combat boots seen the night before at a vigil for Burks.
The gold shoes, with purple laces, are in the signature colors for his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi. Vases of flowers also sat on the ground.
The teacher students remember
Clewis remembers how he helped her get through high school — one of the hardest times — with her mom sick with cancer.
She said she went to school with a smile on her face so as not to draw attention or have people feel sorry for her, but he figured out something was wrong.
Burks would let students stay after class and pray or talk about their problems, she said. Once, when it was raining and she was walking to class, he offered her a ride. When she declined, he gave her an umbrella from his car.
”Knowing that somebody cared, it made it easier to come to school every day, like I had something to look forward to,” Clewis said.
He stayed in touch after she graduated in 2013. When she had one of her kids, he said he’d be teaching his students’ kids.
When Clewis found out Burks had graduated from the police academy, she messaged him to say congratulations.
Alejandro Rios of Mesquite, stopped by For Oak Cliff on Saturday morning, and remembered sitting in Burks’ algebra class at Texans Can Academies and seeing him at the gym.
“He was an amazing teacher,” Rios said.”He would always make everybody’s day. Everybody would look forward to being in his class. He would always make everybody smile sometimes with his jokes ... and he would teach us not only algebra but like, life lessons as well.”
As he stood paying his respects, Rios said he wished he could tell Burks how proud he was of him for being such a good person and chasing his dream of being in law enforcement.
‘A good and decent man’
At the patrol substation, Becky Vance, CEO of Impact Communities, and Beth Wilson, director of communications, wheeled in a wagon of food and drinks for officers after stopping to pay their respects.
A nearby Raising Cane’s also brought 70 meals for officers and staff, calling ahead to see how they could help.
“After the unfortunate events of the week, we thought we would reach out and just see if we could help them out in any way,” said Nick Titus, an area leader of Raising Cane’s restaurants.
Outside, Gloria Spencer, who is a retired Dallas police officer of 37 years, walked up to the car at the patrol substation and left a card.
She stood silently, in the hot sun, looking over the crosses.
”He seemed like a good and decent man, what the department needs, what the world needs,” Spencer said. “There seems to be a shortage of them and I just, it’s hard to digest.”
What makes learning of the shooting “particularly difficult,” she said, is that she remembers when she was shot and wounded in the line of duty in 1979. Spencer said she knows what the surviving officers are going through.
She said she knows what it is like to be inches between being shot in the face.
”Anytime there is an officer killed, you relive that trauma,” Spencer said. “I relive that trauma and this is reliving that trauma, and I’m feeling the pain.”
She said she sympathizes with the officers, and with their families, and wanted to show her respects on Saturday.
”Even though we’re retired, we still worry about the officers,” Spencer said. “We’re still concerned about them. When something like this happens, it happens to us, too.”
She said she was happy to hear that officers were being offered help for their mental health. ”The officers that saw that, they will never outlive that,” Spencer said. “The wound heals and then something like this happens. … It opens up those wounds, wide open again, and you relive it over and over.”
Staff researcher Jennifer Brancato contributed to this article.
