15th August 2012 – A man and woman were found shot to death early this morning on the front porch of their home in Lower Greenville.
Yayehyirad Lemma, 40, and Yenenesh Desta, 31, were attacked just after midnight when they returned to their Marquita Avenue home from a 16-hour shift at Desta, an Ethiopian restaurant Lemma owns on Gr
eenville Avenue near Forest Lane.
The couple have an 18-month-old child, who was not hurt. Lemma’s mother was at the home at the time of the incident babysitting the child, neighbors said.
About midnight, police received multiple reports of shots fired in the Lower Greenvile area, just across the street from the San Francisco Rose. They arrived to find the man and woman dead.
Margie Marshall and Francisco Espinaco live in an apartment across the street and were awake at the time of the shooting.
Espinaco describes hearing two quick, hollow sho
ts, which were dismissed as thunder by Marshall. Two more shots followed and prompted the couple to call 911.
They remained indoors until hearing screams coming from the street from Lemma’s mother.
“I heard her say ‘My son, my son!’” Marshall said. “I have a son, so I had to go help her.”
Marshall said the woma
n was in the streets screaming and jumping up and down for hours as police investigated the scene.
Dallas police are trying to determine a motive, as it remains unclear whether this was a robbery or something else.
Neighbors describe the victims as a quiet and
conservative couple who generally keep to themselves.
Across the street, San Francisco Rose was closed at the time, but surveillance cameras caught Lemma and Desta pulling up to the house and another car following, according to a neighbor that spoke to an employee. The rain was too hard to make out any other details in the footage, but witnesses believe the vehicle following may have fled with its lights off.At least one investigator remained at the scene this morning, but Detective Michael Yeric said there’s not much to add, only that it all happened fast. A shooter (or shooters) simply walked up and started firing, then fled.
Neighbor Bell Velis, 81, didn’t know the couple but has lived on that block of Marquita for 48 years, and this is the first bloodshed he can recall there.
Jacob Hilton, who was staying nearby, said the neighborhood is typically quiet, but gets a lot of traffic.
“I’ve never really seen anyone suspicious.”
