DALLAS – Authorities at a news conference Tuesday said they are seeking several answers as to what a prompted a woman to open fire inside a Dallas airport terminal and where did she get her gun.
“We need to know the why,” Dallas police Chief Eddie Garcia said. “We have to follow that gun and see the origins of where it came from.”
According to Garcia, a woman was dropped off at Love Field Airport at about 11 a.m. Monday, walked inside near the ticketing counters and entered a bathroom. She emerged wearing a hooded sweatshirt or some other clothing that she hadn’t arrived in, pulled a gun and fired several shots, apparently at the ceiling.
An officer nearby shot the woman in her “lower extremities,” wounding her and enabling her to be taken into custody, Garcia said. She was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
“No other individuals were injured in this event other than the suspect,” Garcia said.
Police later identified the woman as 37-year-old Portia Odufuwa.
Garcia said Tuesday that Odufuwa was out of surgery and listed in stable condition.
At the news conference, surveillance video was released showing the actions of the responding officers, whom Garcia praised for de-escalating the situation with no harm to innocent people at the airport.
Records show Odufuwa has a previous criminal history for various offenses, including bank robbery, arson, criminal trespass and false reporting — all filed in cities across North Texas over the past several years. Many of those charges were dismissed, due to her being deemed ‘incompetent to stand trial,” officials said.
In one incident, Odufuwa once claimed that she was the wife of singer Chris Brown, but has no ties to the superstar. In another incident, she told authorities she was “God’s prophet,” records show.
Love Field, which is one of the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s two major airports, suspended airport operations after the shooting, but later resumed after the scene cleared. The Federal Aviation Administration held up flights for a couple of hours while police investigated.
A spokesman for Southwest Airlines, which uses Love Field as a hub, said the airline canceled most of its flights that were scheduled to depart or arrive at Love Field before 6 p.m. CDT. Southwest canceled 85 flights at Love Field on Monday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
The shooting wasn’t the first violent incident at the airport.
In 2016, a police officer shot and wounded a man outside of Love Field after police said he advanced toward the officer with large landscaping rocks in his hands after battering his ex-girlfriend’s car with a traffic cone and rocks as she dropped him off at the airport.