Garland has had a brutal stretch. In just the past several days, multiple violent incidents — domestic shootings, a grocery store stabbing, a double murder inside an apartment complex — have left the city’s residents shaken and its police department working around the clock.
The string of cases, largely unconnected but striking in their proximity, paints a grim picture of violence that has hit Garland hard. Authorities have made arrests in several of the incidents, but for the families left behind, that’s cold comfort.
A Double Murder Inside an Apartment Complex
Perhaps the most harrowing of the recent cases unfolded at the Arts at Broadway Commons apartment complex, near Broadway Boulevard and I-30, just after 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Officers arrived to find the front door forced open. Then they heard gunfire — coming from behind a closed bedroom door. What they found when they finally made entry was devastating.
Lt. Pedro Barineau of the Garland Police Department didn’t mince words. Describing the scene, he said: “As they were on scene, they heard gunshots coming from inside the apartment and then they later heard a male’s voice. The male was taken into custody. And when officers made entry they found that there was two adult women who had been shot in the bedroom.” One woman died at the scene. The other was rushed to a hospital, where she also died.
But here’s the detail that makes this one particularly gut-wrenching: when officers first looked inside the apartment, they saw two small children. The kids were there. Before the shooting stopped, before anyone knew what was happening behind that closed door — they were just there. Barineau confirmed the children’s presence as officers made entry and gunfire rang out.
35-year-old Brodrick Earl Kennedy was taken into custody after he surrendered. He now faces capital murder charges. Reported by journalist Maria Guerrero, the victims have been identified as Kennedy’s wife, Donna Lee Lashay Kennedy, and her mother. A husband. A mother-in-law. Two women who apparently never made it out of that bedroom.
A Fatal Shooting on Rosewood Hills Drive
That wasn’t the only domestic shooting Garland police have had to process recently. Late Saturday night, officers responded to the 800 block of Rosewood Hills Drive, where a woman was found with a gunshot wound inside a bedroom. She was transported to a hospital, where she later died. Her identity has not yet been released.
26-year-old Herman Resendiz-Velez was arrested in connection with the killing. Police have not publicly detailed the nature of the relationship between the suspect and the victim, but the circumstances — a bedroom, a domestic setting, a woman dead — suggest a familiar and devastating pattern. Authorities confirmed the arrest without elaborating on motive.
A Stabbing Death Inside a Grocery Store
Then there’s the case that played out not in a home or an apartment complex, but inside a grocery store. 39-year-old Franky Selyma Arredondo Barrios was stabbed to death — an act of violence so brazen it’s hard to fully absorb. A grocery store. In the middle of what should have been an ordinary errand.
A 32-year-old man ultimately turned himself in to police and is now charged with murder in connection with her death. The suspect’s name has not been widely released, but his decision to surrender — rather than flee — did little to change the outcome for Arredondo Barrios or the people who knew her. Coverage of the case confirmed the murder charge and the circumstances of the suspect’s surrender.
A Party Shooting — Two More Dead
Still, it doesn’t stop there. Over the weekend, a late-night party ended in a double-fatal shooting, resulting in two men — one from Arlington, one from Garland — being jailed on murder charges. Details remain limited, but the outcome is not: two people are dead, two men are behind bars, and whatever the dispute was that night, it escalated beyond anything that could be walked back. Reporting on the incident confirmed the arrests and the murder charges filed against both men.
A City With a Complicated History
None of this exists in a vacuum. Garland has seen serious violence before. On December 26, 2021, a 14-year-old named Abel Acosta opened fire at a Texaco convenience store in the city, killing three people and injuring one — a mass shooting carried out by someone barely old enough to be a freshman in high school. That case remains one of the more jarring chapters in the city’s recent history.
How bad is it, really? That’s a harder question than it sounds. Garland is a large, diverse city — one of the biggest in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — and violent crime, statistically, touches every major city. But a cluster of killings in such a short window, hitting apartment complexes, private homes, and public spaces alike, is the kind of thing that doesn’t just show up in a crime report. It shows up in how people feel walking to their cars at night.
Investigations are ongoing. Charges have been filed. And in Garland, for now, the questions outnumber the answers — especially for the families who didn’t get to say goodbye.
