Police responding to a welfare check Wednesday found two young children under age 5 inside an apartment near Vickery Meadow with their dead parents, Jimena Iliannid Nunez Sandoval, age 24, and David Deshawn Stewart, age 27.

Updated 2 p.m., June 30.

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Dallas police say they did respond to a midnight call of gunshots on Sunday, June 26. Police arrived at the apartment complex a little before 2 a.m. Monday, according to Sergeant Mitchell Warren.  

Police located the apartment unit from which the the caller reported hearing shots fired at that time. 

“Responding officers knocked on the door several times, and announced themselves as police,” Warren says. “Officers also listened at the door for sounds coming from inside the apartment but did not hear anyone inside.”

He says “there was no sign of a forced entry into the apartment and that the areas surrounding the apartment and below the apartment were also searched, and an officer reported knocking on the door of the reporting party, but there was no answer.

“With officers not hearing or seeing any signs of anyone inside the apartment or a sign of a disturbance, officers cleared the call and went back into service.”

According to the Dallas Police Department news release, “Dallas Police were called to an apartment in the 6000 block of Ridgecrest Road [Northridge Court] around noon Wednesday. When officers arrived, they found the male victim and female victim, dead inside an apartment. The preliminary investigation determined the two had been shot. Two children under the age of five years old were also found inside the apartment and were unharmed.”

The news team at WFAA spoke with a neighbor yesterday who told them she had reported an incident involving gunfire Sunday, that police had come out and left when no one answered the victims’ door.

We reached out to the DPD in an attempt to verify whether police came out Sunday, left and returned. Gunshots are not something out of the ordinary in high-density areas of Dallas, and it can be difficult to know where they are coming from, so we also asked police whether it is possible the neighbor who spoke with WFAA could have heard a different gunshot — in other words, were police actually at that door Sunday night? And if so, was there anything that could have been done to avoid leaving a 3 year old and 8 month old for more than two full days in a small apartment with their deceased parents?

DPD has responded to an initial inquiry with a link to the DPD Beat entry. We will let you know what else we hear.

The DPD also told WFAA the couple’s car is missing and that an effort to recover the vehicle hopefully will lead to more answers. Police have not described the vehicle.

The children reportedly are not physically harmed and are in the care of Dallas Family [Child] Protective Services.

We will continue to follow and report on the incident. Please email chughes@advocatemag.com if you have something to share, but first:

Anyone with information regarding this offense is encouraged to contact Detective Yahir Perez at yahir.perez@dallascityhall.com or 214.671.4735. Please reference case # 116917-2022.