Editor’s Note: In 2019, homicides in Dallas spiked to the highest level in more than a decade. This year, The Dallas Morning News is tracking the city’s homicides, exploring the impact on families and neighborhoods and examining the possible causes of the rise in violence.
One in an occasional series.
Jorden Rodgers is just 7, but his age didn’t shelter him from a hard truth when his family gathered at a DeSoto church to mourn his mother after she was slain.
“I know why all these people are here,” he told his grandmother in the sanctuary, where the body of LaTiffiney Rodgers lay in a white casket with a sparkling tiara on her head. “Because my mom died and my dad did it.”
Jorden’s words “broke us down,” Tammy Kirk, LaTiffiney’s mother, recalled in her Cedar Hill living room. Three weeks earlier, her 26-year-old daughter had been found stabbed to death at her home in Far East Dallas.
Domestic-violence slayings like Rodgers’ accounted for 32 of the 210 homicides last year, when the city recorded more slayings than it had in a decade. In the first two months of 2020, Rodgers was one of two women killed by an ex-partner. Dallas had over 200 domestic-violence aggravated assaults during that same period.
Rodgers was one of nine Dallas homicide victims in February. Police say the father of Rodgers’ two young sons fatally stabbed Rodgers and then fled with the boys, sparking an Amber Alert. He fatally shot himself the next day when a SWAT team surrounded the northeast Dallas apartment where he had fled with Jorden and 1-year-old Julien.
As Dallas leaders set goals to reduce bloodshed across the city in 2020, they recognize that preventing domestic violence requires a nuanced approach.
In the Dallas Police Department, a new team within the family violence unit is serving more warrants for domestic abusers. And the mayor has asked a task force for a plan to drop family-violence aggravated assaults by 25% over the next three years.
Fighting domestic violence is complex, said Jan Langbein, the CEO of Genesis Women’s Shelter. That’s because domestic violence itself is complex: It often happens behind closed doors. Victims may not want to come forward. And the calls can be especially dangerous for officers because the abuser can become violent with first responders, she said.
Addressing domestic violence in a community requires teamwork among service providers, police, prosecutors and others, Langbein said.
“It has to be a partnership,” she said. “We cannot do our jobs in a silo. It can't be left on the steps of City Hall or Dallas Police Department or Genesis Women's Shelter.”
February’s violent crime
The nine homicide victims in February ranged in age from 3 months to 49 years. All were male except Rodgers. The youngest was a baby who authorities say died after suffering traumatic head injuries while in his teenage babysitter’s care. And the oldest was a man shot to death in southwestern Dallas.
February’s toll is just half of January’s 18 homicides. Last month’s decline in homicides means Dallas recorded fewer slayings over the first two months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019 — even though there were more homicides in January 2020 than in January 2019.
Dallas Police Chief U. Reneé Hall said the drop is an encouraging sign for her violent crime reduction plan.
“We’re seeing some reductions in multiple areas. We’re not waving any flags of success — it’s very, very early on right now,” the chief told The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board late last month. “But what we recognize is that the plan that we have is working.”
Aggravated assaults on the rise
Mayor Eric Johnson said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News in late February that violent crime so far this year shows mixed results — while homicides have declined, aggravated assaults are up.
“We need to be even more aggressive on dealing with our aggravated assaults, certainly,” the mayor said. “I think we need to do better.”
Family violence cases comprise nearly a quarter of the 1,049 aggravated assaults recorded in the first two months of this year, according to the most recent Dallas police crime statistics.
Johnson wants to take aim at those cases in particular. He has asked the city’s domestic violence task force to recommend measures by October that aim to reduce domestic-violence aggravated assaults by 25% over the next three years.
He asked the task force to examine how to increase shelter space for victims, ensure patrol and family violence unit officers have adequate training and tools, integrate domestic-violence education into schools, provide better on-demand transportation for victims, and identify how to overcome obstacles or circumstances that put victims at a higher risk of severe injury or death.
Family violence isn’t explicitly mentioned in Hall’s violent crime reduction plan, but she said she supported the mayor’s goal.
Hall said family violence wasn’t what drove a spike in homicides and aggravated assaults last year. The chief said family-violence homicides and aggravated assaults increased, but not significantly.
In 2019, Dallas had about a 2% increase in family-violence aggravated assaults compared to the previous year. So far this year, family violence aggravated assaults are down about 4.5% compared to this time last year, police said.
Dallas’ family-violence homicides for 2020 jumped from three to six this month, when police say a man, woman and his two young sons were shot to death at a Far North Dallas hotel in what police suspect is a murder-suicide.
Detectives are waiting autopsy results to determine what happened. Court records show there had been a long-running custody dispute over the boys, 9-year-old Noah and 12-year-old Charlie, between their father, Charles Schoenfeld, and their mother, who was not among the victims.
Among the other family-violence homicide victims is Jeffrey Martinez-Suarez, who police say was killed in February by a roommate.
The Dallas police family violence unit now has a team of officers tracking down and serving warrants for people wanted on family-violence charges. The team, which Hall started in early February, has made more than 70 arrests, mainly for people with warrants for family-violence aggravated assaults, said Assistant Chief Avery Moore.
The most danger
Domestic violence victims often face the most danger when they leave a relationship, Langbein said. But she said that doesn’t mean they should stay.
“We never want the message to be then, ‘So don’t get out.’ Get out, because he will continue to escalate,” Langbein said. “But get out with safety planning — get out with your life.”
Another woman killed by an ex-partner in Dallas this year was 22-year-old Emily Bingabing. Police say her ex-boyfriend Rashad Warren shot her to death outside a Walmart in Far North Dallas. She had just made plans to join the U.S. Army, as a way to set herself on a new career path and to get away from Warren, her family said.
Bingabing’s family said something “wasn’t quite right” about Warren. Bingabing would sometimes have bruises on her arms and explanations for them that didn’t add up. They suspected Warren was to blame.
Warren fatally shot himself after he killed Bingabing, police said.
Johnnie Palmore did the same after police say he fatally stabbed LaTiffiney Rodgers, whose family said the two were in an off-and-on relationship for about 10 years.
They said Rodgers found independence just before her death. She’d moved out of her mother’s home and had gotten her own place. She hoped to get a new job, too, in downtown Dallas.
Rodgers’ mother said though she knew her daughter and Palmore “had problems in the past,” she never expected Palmore would kill her. Rodgers’ family told police she had been afraid to report prior abuse, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit. The document states Palmore had a past family-violence conviction.
Palmore also had once faced a child endangerment charge after Irving police said he pushed Rodgers while she was holding one of the children, causing her to drop him. The charge was later dismissed. Court records don’t explain why.
He wanted to get back together with Rodgers, but she said no, her mother said. Rodgers tried to be accommodating and allowed Palmore to spend time with their children, Kirk said.
Preventing domestic violence from escalating
Kirk has replayed her last phone call with her daughter over and over. It was a Saturday evening, and Palmore was with her, eating dinner and visiting the boys.
“I just want to know what could I have done when I talked to her that Saturday night. I didn't hear nothing that gave off a warning. Nothing,” she said. “Because if I had, I would have been there.”
Service providers, police and others who work in the domestic-violence realm rehash cases like Rodgers’, too. They review domestic-violence homicides as part of the Dallas County Intimate Partner Violence Fatality Review Team.
Langbein, the CEO of the Genesis Women’s Shelter who also chairs the fatality review team, said victims hadn’t called police or sought intervention in many of the deaths the team studies.
That troubled the team, she said.
“We said, ‘Oh my gosh, what is the matter?’ I mean, we work all the time to get the word out, and she didn't call anybody,” Langbein said.
Later, she said, they realized that when victims of domestic violence do seek services, intervention can keep them alive.
‘I know it’s going to be hard’
In early March, Kirk found comfort when Jorden and Julien were released from foster care and moved in with one of Rodgers’ sisters.
Kirk said her grandsons keep her from grieving herself into the ground.
“My hope for my babies is that they can have a nice, fulfilling life full of love,” she said. “I know it's going to be hard. They're going to ask questions, but with all of us and our support and our love, they will get through it and get past it.”
Kirk lights a candle for her daughter every morning near the entryway of her Cedar Hill home.
Beside the candle is Julien’s striped sock monkey, and hanging above is a pink T-shirt, smoothed flat inside a wooden frame. “Fly High LaTiffiney,” it reads.
The candle burns in a teal jar until Kirk goes to bed. That’s when she cries hardest. There’s been an ache in Kirk’s chest since her daughter’s death, she said.
“I say it's a broken heart,” she said, putting a hand on her chest. “That's what I say it is. But everybody's telling me it's anxiety.”
She’s had panic attacks, and she’s afraid to be alone in her house. Her daughter’s death has taken away her sense of security.
“It’s shattered,” she said.
Resources for domestic violence survivors
To find emergency shelter or talk with a professional as a victim or as a concerned friend or family member, contact:
The Family Place | 24-Hour Crisis Hotline: 214-941-1991
Genesis Women’s Shelter and Support: 214-946-4357
Brighter Tomorrows: 972-262-8383
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233
Additional domestic violence resources around Dallas County can be found here. Tarrant County resources can be found here. Collin County resources can be found here.
