Deadly Christmas Eve Shooting Now A Bias Crime Says Dallas Police
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DALLAS (CBS11) - Surveillance video shows people scrambling and an injured employee hit the ground, as a man with a gun opens fire outside Omar's Wheels and Tires in Dallas' Pleasant Grove neighborhood.
"He was standing right here and he was shooting everybody… like almost 9, 10 bullets," said the owner who asked we not use his name.
He believes he was the target of a hate crime.
"If I was doing that, (I) would be a terrorist. 'Omar's a terrorist'," he said.
He says the shooter wore a yamulke, a traditional Jewish cap, and had visited the shop two weeks earlier.
"He said, 'Who is Omar?' My friend told him, 'Omar is Omar.' He said, 'Is he Muslim?' And my friend told him, 'Yea, why?' And he said, 'All these Muslims, they're making problems for us.'"
Before the man left that day, employees say he threatened them.
"He said I'm gonna come back and kill all of y'all, and sure enough he came back on Christmas Eve and shot everybody," said the owner.
Three people were grazed by bullets.
The injured employee who appeared in the video survived, but a customer, Enrique Garcia, was killed, when he was shot in the head, sitting in the backseat of his car.
The owner returned fire, and police later arrested Anthony Torres, after he showed up at a hospital with gunshot wounds.
"Muslim guy did this, Muslim guy did that. Muslim people do this. It's not true. We just come here, work hard, we're like everybody else. We lead normal life," said the owner.
Dallas police say, when questioned Torres identified himself as both Jewish and Christian.
They say labeling this a "bias crime" usually upgrades the charge, but in this case the murder is already a first degree felony.
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