Teen girls charged with murder in downtown Dallas shooting

dallas — Dallas police charged a second teenage girl with capital murder after a shooting near Victory Plaza this weekend. They're still searching for at least one more suspect and the person who pulled the trigger. 

Police say the victim, 18-year-old Jake Reynosa was walking down the street around 5 a.m. Sunday when he was approached by at least three people near the intersection of N Houston Street and Nowitzki Way in a robbery attempt.

"The victim tried to get away from the suspects and that's when he was shot," said Dallas Police spokesperson Kristin Lowman.

Officers found a car they believe the suspects were using, but when they tried to pull it over near the intersection of Elm and Ervay, they say, three people took off running.

Officers caught up to one, a 15-year-old girl.

Another suspect, a 16-year-old girl, was arrested Monday.

Neither is believed to have fired the shot that killed Reynosa, but their suspected involvement in the robbery is enough under Texas law to be held just as responsible as whoever did.

One suspect still on the loose has been described by police only as a man, though they say there could be others involved.

Both girls now under arrest are too young to have their names released by police, but not too young to be charged with capital murder.

It's rare for teen girls to be linked to such a violent crime.

FBI crime data shows in the US women are suspects in less than 12 percent of murders.

Young women are even less likely to kill.

Of more than 16,000 homicides in the US in the year 2019, the FBI reports only 50 were committed by girls between 13 and 16 years old.

During a visit to Dallas earlier this year, FBI director Christopher Wray, though, expressed concern that violent offenders across the country were getting younger.

"You have gangs that will task juveniles to be the shooter because of the perception that they have that the consequences to the juvenile will be less," he said.

Dallas County juvenile records, though, show locally between 2018 and 2022 there was a significant drop in overall youth crime, with the exception of murder which more than doubled among juveniles.

Dallas police are asking anyone with information on this weekend's robbery and murder to give them a call.  

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Andrea Lucia

Andrea Lucia joined CBS 11 and TXA 21 in September 2010, one day before a tornado swept through the area. She's been covering major stories across North Texas ever since.

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