Man details being shot by police after 911 error sent them to wrong home
By Doug Myers, Briseida Holguin
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GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas (KTVT) — A Grand Prairie man says police shot him after he opened his garage door to what he believed were burglars — only to discover officers had mistakenly arrived at his home due to a 911 dispatch error.
“I never popped a round off. As soon as the door opened, I saw their badge. I threw the gun to the ground, got shot in the leg,” Thomas Simpson told CBS News Texas.
Simpson said the incident happened around 1:30 a.m. Friday. He was awakened by his dogs barking and, fearing a break-in, grabbed his firearm and opened the garage door. He said he raised the weapon in self-defense but dropped it immediately upon recognizing police badges. That’s when he said officers opened fire, striking him in the leg.
“They did not identify themselves or anything,” he said. “They never said Grand Prairie Police Department. But I recognized from the light, the shine off the badge when the garage door got to a certain point, and that’s why I dropped my pistol.”
Grand Prairie police later confirmed that officers were responding to a disturbance call but were mistakenly sent to the wrong address due to a computer-aided dispatch system error.
The family said police fired a total of eight rounds — some of which struck the garage and interior walls — even after Simpson was on the ground. His teenage son and nephew, who were also armed, were standing behind him at the time.
All five family members were detained for about four hours, according to the family, including the children, who were handcuffed and placed in police vehicles.
“Even my children, 13-year-old and 16-year-old, had to sit in the back of a cop car in handcuffs for three hours,” Simpson said.
Simpson said police offered no explanation or apology afterward. He was taken to the hospital and later released. He said he plans to take legal action.
“We’re gonna talk to lawyers and go after everybody responsible for it,” he said. “They need to pay. They need to learn there’s consequences to their actions.”
The family was in the process of moving out of the rental home when the shooting occurred. They said one of the bullets ruptured a water pipe, flooding the house with three inches of water. Fortunately, most of their belongings had already been moved out.
Simpson expressed frustration with how the situation was handled.
“Hopefully, they’ll follow their police procedures in the future, because from what it appears, a lot of the actual procedures were (expletive) in my opinion,” he said.
CBS News Texas has reached out to the Grand Prairie Police Department multiple times for further comment but has not received a response. The incident remains under investigation.
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