Another Murder In Amarillo

Last year was kind of a banner year for Amarillo when it came to violent crime. We went down in murders and it seemed like for the first time in a long time, we were headed in the right direction.

Then 2024 hit, and it seems like we're going backward in a major way. Amarillo Police were called out to 116 N. Bowyer St. to investigate a homicide.

Now normally, it wouldn't be a some kind of shocking news. Sadly, this kind of thing happens more often than we want to hear about it in any city. The problem here is that after a year of trending downward in violent crimes like murder, we're trending way back up.

This is now the eighth homicide of the year that has been reported in Amarillo for 2024, and the second one alone in the month of May.

There aren't really a whole lot of details on the crime as of yet, but there seems to be confirmation that a homicide took place. The last one in Amarillo happened just about two weeks ago on May 15.

So for all the work police had seemingly done to get the numbers of violent crime down, it appears we're headed to a potential record setting year of homicides in the city. We hear questions all the time about is Amarillo safe?

If this trend continues, it won't be. The reasons for homicide are never good ones. It typically ends up being somebody was upset with another person and resorted to that. It could be something that happens in a split second with people that don't even know each other.

Those kinds of things make it hard to even want to talk to people you don't know, and it doesn't paint a good picture of our fair city. So let's put the guns down and reverse the trend Amarillo. We don't want to see those violent crime rates tick back up.