City Lawsuit

City of Dallas sues Texaco station in crime-ridden northeast neighborhood

The city is blaming the gas station.

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The city of Dallas has filed a lawsuit against a Texaco station in northeast Dallas, blaming it for tolerating drug deals and other criminal activity.

According to a release, the lawsuit was filed on July 22 against the owner of the Texaco at 11770 Ferguson Rd., blaming the gas station for its role as a hub for crimes such as drug dealing and robbery.

The station is located at the crime-ridden intersection at Ferguson and 635 that's right on the border of Dallas and Garland — making it a kind of no man's land in terms of law enforcement. Many homeless and panhandlers can be found camped there daily, harassing motorists getting on and off 635.

The entire neighborhood has had issues for years, with numerous shootings at the strip center next door. But the lawsuit seems to have been prompted by videos that were posted on Facebook in July showing a group of young men loitering at the gas station, selling drugs, and getting into fights.

The city cites 36 crimes that took place at the Texaco between July 2017 to July 2018, including robbery, aggravated assault, drug deals, and a shooting in February, when a security guard was killed and another person was critically injured.

But the company that owns the Texaco — Bajrangbali786 LLC in Houston, registered to Avish Patel and Sandeep Shah — bought the property in 2018.

The owners of an apartment building next door are among business owners who say the area is not being properly policed.

Geoff Henley, who recently bought the Meadows apartment building with his brother Hudson, wrote an editorial for the Dallas Morning News on July 2, listing the problems they'd encountered with drug dealers in the neighborhood and calling for a greater police presence and more arrests.

"While we have cleared out dealers on the property, the problem is much greater," Henley writes. "In front of the only driveway to the complex, dealers run an open-air drug emporium at the gas station next door. Right off the freeway and on the Dallas-Garland border, the site is a crime magnet."

Henley says that a police car drives through every half hour or so but the police are outnumbered.

The Texaco manager, Alex Mahomood, tells NBC 5 that he has called 911 nearly 100 times in the past three months, but police rarely respond; and that he has turned over dozens of surveillance videos to police that were recorded on the store's camera, with no action taken.

Henley's security staff has also called 911 without response.

This is not the first time the city has sued a property owner, alleging they are a party to criminal activity. In 2017, the city sued the Bent Creek Shopping Center at Forest Lane and Audelia Road, describing it also as a hub for criminal activity, and calling it a crime "enabler."

More recently, they managed to shut down Jim's Car Wash, a longtime business on Martin Luther King Boulevard, after 15 years of blaming them for crime in the area.

The release from the city says that the Dallas Police Department will maintain escalated patrols in the area and will be conducting additional operations in the coming days.

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Texas ranks among worst states to have a baby, new report says

Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash

The best places to have a baby are in the Midwest and the Northeast, not the South, according to the report.

Texas might be a family friendly state, but it certainly isn't baby friendly, according to a new WalletHub study.

Texas earned a dismal rank as No. 45 in WalletHub's 2026 report "Best and Worst States to Have a Baby," which compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 31 "baby friendliness" metrics, such as affordability, health care accessibility, infant care costs, and others.

The top five best states to have a baby, in order, are: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

Texas ranked 7th worst overall in the U.S. because of how expensive it is to have a child in the state, and because of its low prevalence of healthcare professionals for mothers and children relative to other states.

Across the four main categories in the report, Texas landed 47th nationally for its medical costs, 42nd in healthcare quality, and its baby- and family-friendliness both ranked 34th best in the country.

WalletHub says the average cost for a conventional delivery in the U.S. comes out to more than $15,700, and families with health insurance have an average out-of-pocket cost of about $2,600. The report doesn't break down state-by-state charges, but it ranked Texas 35th and 36th respectively in the national comparisons of states with the lowest costs for hospital cesarean and conventional deliveries.

The cost of childcare is another factor bringing down the state's overall performance, as WalletHub says Texas has the 23rd "best" annual cost of early childcare on average.

Here's how the report broke down the rest of Texas' ranking:

No. 27 – Parental leave policy score
No. 27 – Infant mortality rate
No. 28 – Rate of low-birth weight
No. 44 – Midwives and OB-GYNs per capita
No. 36 – Pediatricians and family medicine physicians per capita
No. 33 – Childcare centers per capita

According to WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo, expecting families should consider living in the states that "minimize costs while providing top-notch care for both newborns and their mothers."

"[The best states] also continue to be good environments for parents even long after the birth, with high-quality pediatric care, affordable and accessible child care, and a strong economic environment that makes providing for a child easier,” Lupo said.

Mississippi (No. 51), Alabama (No. 50), Florida (No. 49), New Mexico (No. 48), Nevada (No. 47), and South Carolina (No. 46) all join Texas at the bottom of the list as the worst states to have a baby.

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