Family Of Man Who Shot Paramedic: 'There Were No Warning Signs'
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DALLAS (CBS11) - A Dallas Fire-Rescue paramedic is recovering Monday night after being shot while responding to a shooting call in the afternoon along Reynolds Avenue in Dallas.
The gunman was later found dead inside a home near another body.
What started as a shooting called quickly transformed into a standoff.
Sources say the man who pulled the trigger was Derick Lamont Brown.
A police robot discovered him dead inside a home along with another body.
"The saddest outcome I can think of," said Dekisha Bryant, the suspect's sister.
Brown's family said there were no warning signs.
"I don't know what happened today," said Bryant. "I wish it never would have happened and I'm sad for everybody."
Brown had a lengthy criminal background that included DWIs and firearms charges.
"I don't understand what happened. I'm dumbfounded," said Samuel Brown, the suspect's father.
Samuel Brown suspects his son might have been stressed over his life.
"I was hoping that it was somebody else's house. But it turned out it's not," said Brown. "It's just breaking my heart to know."
Brown insists his son was a generous man who tried helping others and was involved in the Black Panthers and other civil rights movements.
CBS11 spoke to Derick Lamont Brown in 2004:
"We are people of a nonviolent nature, therefore we're going to come to them nonviolently, and I mean by any means necessary if we choose to do other things, we'll do so," said Derick Brown. "If they step out of their bounds, we'll step out of ours."
"There wasn't no violence in his heart," said Brown. "There was always good in his heart, nothing bad."
Mayor Mike Rawlings met with reporters inside city hall and pointed toward mental health as the issue.
"In my mind, someone that was not mentally stable dealt a lot of pain this afternoon," said Rawlings.
Dallas Police said the paramedics showed up to the shooting scene before and without any police response.
"So the call came in as a shooting incident. And within the notes on our computer terminals inside, it said self-inflicted gunshot," said Chief David Coatney with Dallas Fire Rescue. "So, there's a lot of information, there's a lot of dispatch information, that we're still going through at this time."
Investigators are crediting a Dallas Police officer who sources identify as Sgt. Robert Watson with saving the paramedics life. They said he pulled the injured paramedic to safety and used his patrol car to rush him to the hospital.
"That act likely saved that paramedic's life," said Chief David Pughes with the Dallas Police Department.
The civilian who was shot is currently recovering in the ICU.
Investigators say the paramedic is in critical but stable condition.
An officer was also hurt but not taken to the hospital.
