51-year-old man seeking psychiatric care shot at Dallas VA under investigation

Family struggling with questions after VA police shoot and kill Army veteran at medical center in Dallas

Dallas Morning News
By David Tarrant
Mar 6, 2020

January shooting during confrontation with 51-year-old man seeking psychiatric care remains under investigation by the Dallas Police Department

Dallas police squad cars park outside the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center near where a man was fatally shot by hospital police Wednesday night.(Metro News Service)

On a Friday morning in early January, two cops showed up at Donovan Ashcraft’s house.

The 23-year-old from McAlester, Oklahoma, was at home with the mother of his new baby.

“Do you know Donald Ashcraft?” one of the officers asked him.

Donovan’s father, a 51-year-old Army veteran from Oklahoma City, had struggled with mental health issues for years. He’d been arrested months earlier for threatening violence with a knife. Donovan hadn’t spoken to his father since last summer. Now he feared the worst.

“Is he dead?” the son asked.

Yes, the officers told him.

Officers fatally shot the Army veteran on the night of Jan. 8 after he allegedly refused to drop a knife at the Dallas VA Medical Center.

Donald arrived at the southeast Dallas hospital seeking help "for psychiatric issues” and was seen holding the weapon, according to police statements. When he tried to walk away, VA officers followed him, trying multiple times to disarm him. “The man attempted to attack VA police with the knife, causing VA police to fatally shoot him,” according to the statement issued by the medical center.
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