Photographer warns others after he was target of robbery while taking photos of Downtown Dallas
DALLAS - A North Texas photographer said a group of men tried to sneak up on him and then started shooting.
It happened on the Houston Street Bridge over the Trinity River in Dallas.
The photographer believes he was being targeted for a robbery because of his equipment.
He’s now warning others who do the same.
Dallas police confirm they are investigating, but so far, no one is in custody.
What might otherwise look like an ordinary pedestrian bridge over the Trinity, is also a perch where Ron Shipp captures the beauty of Dallas.
"This is one of my favorite and most frequent locations to visit, especially after dark with the city lit up," Shipp said.
But Shipp caught the ugly side at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, April 12.
The photographer was just setting foot on the Houston Street Bridge, when he heard voices.
"Probably within 30 yards of leaving my car, I could hear voices in the shadows behind me," he recalled. "I looked, I saw some movement, but I couldn’t see people. It concerned me, but not a lot."
Shipp said he would continue to hear voices, and he elected not to veer off to the levee.
"At that point, I either turn off into the dark or stay on the lit bridge," he said.
Eventually, Shipp looked over the side of the bridge, and that’s when he said he saw where the voices were coming from.
"I kind of dashed over to the side at one point to look down, saw nothing, but as I looked back, there were two men on the outside railing of the bridge," he recalled. "Got to be honest, that scared me, grown men going through that much effort to approach in the dark and had followed me a third of the way out on the bridge."
Shipp said he spotted two or three men on the other side of the bridge as well, and then started making a run for Downtown Dallas.
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"I glanced back over my shoulder after a couple of seconds, expecting to see them come out, and what I see instead is a man that I’d seen hiding behind one of the light posts, looking at me, see him looking toward me and I see six flashes and hear six gunshots," he said.
Shipp was not hit by the gunfire.
He kept running until he got to the Omni Downtown, and would later report the incident to police.
Shipp now wants to warn other photographers who frequent areas along the Trinity for a good view of downtown.
"They may have just been looking for a target of opportunity, but a location where photographers walk with bags of heavy equipment and setup in the dark sure feels like somebody caught on to that and they’re targeting people. May have just been a target of opportunity," he added. "This was dark and sinister, and these guys had very bad intent."
FOX 4 did not spot any surveillance cameras on the bridge where this happened, and police have not put out any suspect description.