8 Hour Stand-Off Ends Peacefully In Dallas
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - After an eight hour standoff, police found no one inside the Ace Cash Express near the intersection of Midway and Frankford in Far North Dallas. The shopping center was the center of a heavy SWAT presence for most of the day after an employee walked in on a burglary.
This all started just after 8 a.m when that Ace Cash Express employee came in to open the store. That's when she told police she found a masked suspect waiting inside with a gun demanding money. Fortunately that employee was able to get away just as officers got there.
Police now tell us they believe the suspect was able to get inside the Ace Cash Express by going through a hole they say they found from a neighboring business. They say that's one of the reasons it took so long to clear the area because they had to search every business in the shopping center.
The good news is the one employee who had contact with the suspect was not hurt, and officers credit her with staying calm.
"She actually did a very good job of forestalling the individual while he had her at gunpoint, and at a certain point when she was doing that conversation, she was able to break free and of course ran right out the front door," Dallas Police Lt. Emmitt Jackson said.
The shopping center has reopened to the public, and that's welcome news for many in the crowd that waited outside during the standoff. Cris Dessi owns a restaurant next to the Ace Cash Express and worried that the standoff with the suspect might force him to cancel his New Year's Eve party.
"Maybe they should go and earn some living working instead of going stealing somebody else's livelihood," Dessi said.
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