John Jefferson
Inset: Jason County (Dallas County). Background: The street where a 2-year-old girl was shot during a road rage incident (Google Maps).
A Dallas man is behind bars after an extreme bout of road rage left a 2-year-old girl shot and fighting for her life, police in Texas say.
Jason Cain, 50, stands accused of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of intentionally causing serious bodily injury to a child, Dallas County jail records show.
A subsequent investigation turned up Nazi imagery inside the defendant’s home, police allege, along with a cache of weapons.
The incident occurred around 8 p.m. on Sunday night along Sweetwater Drive in east Dallas near the Forest Hills neighborhood.
“The preliminary investigation determined the suspect, 50-year-old Jason Cain, shot into a vehicle at the location, hitting a two-year-old girl,” a Dallas Police Department spokesperson told Law&Crime. “The girl was taken to a local hospital, treated, and released.”
On the night in question, a family was driving together to complete a Door Dash delivery when they came upon a man on a motorcycle, according to police cited by Dallas-based Fox affiliate KDFW.
Later, the family told investigators the man did not have his lights on and was riding in the dark, according to police.
The car swerved to avoid the biker and honked, police claim. After that, the two drivers exchanged words, according to an affidavit obtained by Dallas-based ABC affiliate WFAA.
Then, the man on the motorcycle turned around, followed the family, and fired two shots into their car, according to police. The girl was struck in the abdomen — whereupon one bullet ricocheted off her ribs and came to rest in her diaphragm. One bullet was reportedly left inside the girl’s body because doctors determined that efforts to remove it might do more harm than good, according to the affidavit.
One woman, who lives on the street in question, heard the gunfire and came outside to see what was going on.
“I got over to the car, and it whipped around and then stopped next to me,” she told KDFW. “And the mom, I assume, jumped out of the passenger side and said, ‘They shot my baby!’ two times.”
The woman said she saw the toddler drenched in blood, so she told the family to drive straight to a hospital while she called 911. Moments later, squad cars rushed toward the scene of the crime.
Police say they later identified Cain through a combination of witness testimony and video evidence of the shooting.
Multiple people allegedly told law enforcement they saw a motorcycle with a sidecar, and a dog riding in the sidecar, following a gray sedan. Then, those witnesses said, they saw the biker fire two shots.
That description meshed almost exactly with a known quantity on the street in question.
“I’m completely blown away that it happened here and having anything to do with my neighbors,” Cain’s next-door neighbor told WFAA. “They’re great. He gets on his Harley and takes his dog in the side car, and they go for like, little, you know, cruises around the block.”
Police allegedly turned up “many satanic and Nazi symbols,” rifles, and a handgun, during the execution of a search warrant at the defendant’s home on Sweetwater, according to the affidavit.
The woman who called 911 said she never would have thought one of her neighbors would shoot a small child.
“The way that mom’s voice sounded really just — is all I can think about,” the witness told KDFW. “And the way that that little baby — she just wasn’t moving, she wasn’t crying, and I really thought she was gone.”
The girl is said to be in stable condition.
The defendant is currently being detained in the north tower of the Dallas County jail on a combined bond of $850,000.
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