Here’s how school and City officials have reacted after the fatal shooting at Willis Winters Park

It has been just over a month since 18-year-old Wornan Garcia Padilla died after being shot in the parking lot of Willis C. Winters Park. 

Grief over the loss of the Woodrow Wilson High School student and soccer player was palpable at a meeting held by Dallas ISD and City officials earlier this month.

“The fact is that we failed,” Dallas ISD Region V Director Nancy Bernardino said. “We are committed to improving our systems to keep our students safe so we don’t have a tragedy like this.”

Bernardino’s voice cracked with emotion as she described Wornan’s death as “a great loss.”

“Keep holding us accountable because, as I talked to Wornan’s mom, no mom should have to go through that, and we know that,” she said. “We are learning from it, and we are committed to doing better.”

These quotes are in response to a question, asked in Spanish and translated into English, at the meeting from an attendee: “Every year, we have incidents in the park, unfortunately. Why did this have to happen for us to mobilize?”

The audience inside WWHS’s auditorium applauded this question. 

“It is our responsibility; it’s not an excuse,” Dallas ISD Police Chief Albert Martinez said.

Dallas ISD and the City tried to appear united at the meeting, organized by school board trustee Sarah Weinberg and City Council members Paul Ridley and Jesse Moreno, and acknowledged that safety at Willis Winters Park is the responsibility of both entities. 

“For me, it doesn’t matter if our kids are inside a DISD campus, at our park, at our homes, these kids belong to all of us, and we’re going to continue working together,” Mayor Pro Tem Moreno said. 

Dallas ISD School Board District 2 Trustee Sarah Weinberg opens the meeting at Woodrow Wilson High School following the near-campus death of student Wornan Garcia Padilla. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.

The City and school district have an interlocal agreement regarding Willis Winters Park.

“Willis Winters Park and DISD operate under an existing interlocal agreement that already defines the roles for supervision, enforcement and public safety depending upon the time of day and the use of the facility,” Ridley said. “The issue before us is not a lack of the rules, but the need for clarity and consistent execution of that agreement.”

But Bernardino and Martinez said the agreement needs to be reviewed.

“The interlocal agreement was drafted 20 years ago,” Bernardino said. “What we know is that there may be parts in there that are not relevant at this time, so we are currently in the process of revisiting that with something that makes sense with the realities of today.” 

District 14 Park and Recreation Board member Rudy Karimi hit back at these claims on Facebook.

“The real issue isn’t the age of the ILA,” Karimi said in a post. “Let’s be ultra clear, it’s that many of DISD’s core requirements around safety, security, supervision and control of its students were NEVER consistently followed.”

So what has been done since the shooting?

Dallas ISD has contracted with Allied Universal security to monitor the park and its perimeter from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., said Nancy Bernardino, Region V regional director. That contract will be active until the end of the school year, at which time the school district will re-evaluate. Another parking lot attendant has also been added to oversee the parking lot at the park, and there’s an additional police officer on campus. 

WWHS now has limited exit points to two specific locations for students to leave the campus, Bernardino said, which has led to an increase in student attendance.

Doors that are not designated for official exiting will have alarms on them that will ring if used and capture the offending student’s image. New badges have been issued to classify which students are authorized for late arrival or early dismissal or are traveling to another campus. Parking stickers are being distributed to all students, not just seniors, so vehicles that belong to Woodrow students can be accounted for. Cameras are in the hallways and at the doors, and adult monitors are also present in the hallways to catch blind spots.

A representative from Dallas Park and Recreation Department said park ranger and marshal patrols at Wills Winters Park have been enhanced, and there are monitored cameras in the park. Both police departments for the CIty and school district are also collaborating on patrols.

“I think we’re in the process of also adding an additional camera that will allow us to capture all of Covington, Glasgow, that corner that right now we haven’t been able to get on camera,” Bernadino said. 

Information about gun safety is also expected to be distributed to students. 

Bernardino also said that data will be collected and shared when appropriate and with respect to privacy laws. 

“We know we have to establish some baseline data,” she said. “We don’t keep records of the incidents that happen at the park. We do keep records of what happens within Dallas ISD.”

More transparency is needed, Martinez said, and the relationship between police and the community needs to be strengthened to prevent more tragedies. 

“We need to involve you, and that’s one thing that we, in law enforcement, really fail. I tell people in 1994 when I hit the streets of Dallas, I was God’s answer to policing, but then wisdom and time comes through when you realize it takes a whole lot of people,” he said. “We should not be meeting during these incidents. We should have met, as you pointed out (in an audience member’s question), in 2022 and 2025 and hold ourselves accountable to you. Without your trust, we have nothing in law enforcement.”