As man, woman lay dead at Haltom City house, a torrent of gunfire when police arrived

Three police officers walked on Saturday in the street toward the ranch-style house where a man had shot two people dead.

When they reached a point near where asphalt connects with the driveway, a fusillade of rifle fire tore from the house into the evening air in Haltom City. The rounds tossed dirt across the street. Car alarms began to pulse.

Each of the officers was shot.

Two of them crumpled. The third ran toward a house to the west. Other officers approaching continued on. One found cover behind a bush.

The gunman, Edward Freyman, did not stay for long inside as police poured into the 5700 block of Diamond Oaks Drive North and returned fire.

Freyman, 28, left from the back of the house and jumped fences as he moved south through the neighborhood.

About an hour later and a half-mile away, a person alerted the authorities to another body.

Freyman was dead, police said, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

Police said that the injured officers are expected to survive.

Freyman knew the people that police said he shot to death, but his precise relationships with Collin Davis, 33, and Amber Tsai, 32, were not clear. Tsai’s sister told the Dallas Morning News that Tsai and Davis were close friends.

Tsai owned the home where she was slain, according to Tarrant County property records. Her body was found inside; Davis’ body was in the driveway.

The killings’ motivation were a focus of an incomplete law enforcement investigation.

Freyman also shot a neighbor, police said. The woman, who called 911 to report the gunfire, was expected to undergo surgery and survive, police said.

On Sunday, boards replaced glass in the house’s window frames. Neighbors discussed the violence.

Freyman fired the first shots about 6:45 p.m. Saturday and upon the officers about eight minutes later, police said.

A neighbor, Angel Trevino, said he thought the first rounds were fireworks for the Fourth of July weekend until he and his wife looked out from a window.

“I see the dustup,” Trevino recalled. “All around there was literally just dirt flying up in the air. We walked out. Another barrage of rounds came up.” Trevino told his son to get a gun for protection as his wife called 911 and they took cover in their home.

“We looked at the trajectory of where it was coming from and we saw the muzzle fire coming from the [neighbor’s] home,” he said.

Trevino, 56, said he saw three officers arrive, and he and his son pointed them to a victim on the ground. “As soon as they were running toward the victim … as the coward that he was, as soon as the officers got close to that victim, that’s when he fired on them,” Trevino said.

“I’m still commending the officers because they literally ran into it,” he said. “They literally put their lives on the line for my neighbors and my family.”

Freyman’s body was found in the 3900 block of Golden Oaks Drive. A handgun was “in the vicinity of his arms,” and a “military-style rifle” was near, a police spokesperson said. Freyman served in the U.S. Army and Texas National Guard from 2014 to 2021, officials said.

Haltom City Police Chief Cody Phillips said at a press conference on Sunday that the officers walked into “an ambush situation, so if they wouldn’t have been prepared, this situation could’ve turned out a lot worse.

“There could have been several officers deceased over not being able to respond correctly,” Phillips said. “So they responded as they were trained, and that was crucial.”