Dallas police are investigating the shooting death of a man who, according to witnesses, was shot by the very people he had just tried to help.
Rubin Brown, 27, was shot multiple times early Thursday when someone fired upwards of 23 bullets into his house and car in the 4300 block of Crozier Street, near Fair Park.
The shooting was reported approximately an hour after Brown had intervened in a domestic dispute that turned violent and ended up in his front yard, witnesses said.
Brown's finacee Quenethi Bell said the family was up late celebrating the birthday of 2-year-old Daytoine.
“We were celebrating his birthday and we heard a loud thud. Just like thud. Thud. And we came outside, and they were out of the car, and he had thrown her on top of the hood. He was beating on her,” Bell said.
"We don't know them from Adam and Eve, whatsoever," said Demetric Young, Brown's friend who witnessed both the dispute and the shooting that followed, about the man and woman whose physical fighting spilled into Brown's yard.
Brown and others came to the aid of a woman who appeared to be trying to escape a violent man.
“He came out and said you need to move, it’s my son’s birthday. We wanted to keep the mood happy for him,” Bell said about Brown's intervention into the dispute.
After the intervention, the woman whom Brown had just helped reportedly became upset, according to Young, and began to shout.
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"They drove off and said, 'They'd be back.' We thought nothing of it," Young said.
"We were just, [Brown] was just being a Good Samaritan," Young said.
“That’s the kind of person he was. He saw that she needed help and he helped her,” Bell said.
One of the witnesses to the domestic dispute called 911 to report the fight, according to Dallas police records. Officers responded to the scene of what was categorized as an assault at approximately 12:30 Thursday morning.
It was only a matter of minutes after police left the house from taking the initial that gunshots began to ring out and cut through Brown's home, Young said.
"Like they didn't care who or how many people was in there. It's just cold hearted," Young said about the shooting.
Brown, Bell, their 6-month-old daughter Deja, 2-year-old son Daytoine, and Brown's brother in law were all inside the house during the shooting. Brown was hit by multiple bullets and was later pronounced dead at Baylor Medical Center. No one else was wounded in the shooting.
Brown worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail sorter, according to Young.
Dallas police were planning to meet with the family at noon on Friday to give an update into their investigation.
DPD spokesperson Sherri Jeffrey said no arrests have been made in the case as of press time. Investigators have taken video from a camera across the street that may have caught the incident on tape. Jeffrey said that video is being analyzed.
NBC 5's Ben Russell and Jeff Smith contributed to this report.
