Woman shot and killed on Oak Cliff street; estranged husband found dead from self-inflicted wound at nearby

home
By LINDSAY RUEBENS Staff Writer lruebens@dallasnews.com Published 10 June 2011 08:22 AM A man gunned down his estranged wife in front of several witnesses Friday morning on an Oak Cliff street before fleeing to his home and killing himself, police said. Martha Elena Garcia, 30, was arguing with Jalmar Garcia in a car at about 7 a.m. near the intersection of Cockrell Hill Road and Illinois Street. Martha Garcia jumped from the moving vehicle, and her estranged husband chased her through traffic before shooting her at least three times in the middle of the street, homicide Lt. David Pughes said. He was running through the street shooting, Pughes said, so a lot of people were trying to take cover. The shooting was witnessed by more than a dozen people on two DART buses, Pughes said. There were a ton of witnesses, he said. It was rush-hour traffic. Police said the car was still in gear when the two jumped out, and it rolled into the parking lot of a nearby taco shop. Jalmar Garcia abandoned the car and ran into a neighborhood where he stole another vehicle at gunpoint and drove away. No one was hurt in the carjacking. An officer who recognized the mans name from a previous domestic dispute found the stolen car at the mans home, about a mile from where the shooting took place. Officers surrounded the house in the 5200 block of Tato Road, near Loop 12 and Illinois, and tried to contact the suspect. A woman at the home, who may have been related to the victim, escaped the home unharmed. Tactical officers later forced their way into the home and found the man in a front room, dead from a selfinflicted gunshot wound.