A Broken Ankle and a Fake Name: The Affidavit's Trail From a Deep Ellum Parking Lot to a Garland Surrender
A tipster's call, a hospital check-in under the name 'David Jones' — an alias police say the suspect had used before, in a 2024 traffic stop — is how detectives say they found the man accused of wounding seven people on Halloween night.
DALLAS — The break in the Deep Ellum case was not a camera or a license plate. It was an ankle. According to the arrest affidavit reported Monday, a tipster called Dallas police later on Nov. 1 saying his wife had information about the Halloween-night shootout that wounded seven people in a parking lot at 2626 Main Street: the suspect, she said, had worn a gray hoodie, broke his ankle during the incident and went to a hospital — and she gave detectives the name of a witness who had been with the shooter. Detectives checked Baylor Medical Center's records and found a man who had arrived with an ankle injury, wearing gray clothing and no shoes, and given the name "David Jones." Police say the alias was the tell: the man they matched it to, David Yancy, had used the same fake name in a traffic stop in 2024.
Yancy surrendered to the Dallas Police Fugitive Unit on Nov. 4 at an apartment on Savoy Place in Garland, after seeing himself featured on a local television fugitive segment, police said. He is accused in connection with the shootout reported around 1:02 a.m. on Nov. 1, where officers found seven people suffering from gunshot wounds — Tamarius Jones, Deja Mane Wilson, Kevon Hunter, Asia Ross, Jakendria Polk, Emerson Franklin and Jazmin Steve, as released in the affidavit reporting. Police have not released a clear motive; one victim told detectives a friend had been involved in a physical altercation earlier in the night. The accusation remains exactly that — an accusation, proceeding through the courts — and this desk reports the affidavit as the police account it is.
The Main Street shootout was one of three separate shootings in Deep Ellum that night, unfolding over about 75 minutes — the first around 12:20 a.m. in the 2600 block of Elm Street, then Main Street, then a third around 1:35 a.m. in the 200 block of South Crowdus Street — and four people were killed in the night's violence, the deadliest in recent memory for the entertainment district. On Monday, officials announced Operation Deep Cover, the federal-assistance safety initiative now policing the district. The affidavit's publication fills in the investigative middle of the story this desk has followed since Nov. 1: not the violence, and not the response, but the ordinary, unglamorous thread — a limp, a false name, a phone call — that connected them.
