Sam Lee Morris was still alive when police found him. The disabled 61-year-old was laying unconscious in the road at the intersection of Sunnyvale and Cummings Street in Southeast Oak Cliff just before 10 p.m. Saturday night, having apparently been hit by a car.
That's what officers suspected, at least, but the vehicle that had hit him was long gone, and no other witnesses came forward that night. They put Morris in an ambulance bound for Baylor, where he died.
Since then, homicide detectives have pieced together a better picture of what happened. Police say that Roberts was on the sidewalk, just a few dozen steps from his Cummings Street home, when a group of teenagers attacked him. During the struggle, they pushed him into the road, right into the path of a white vehicle of unknown make and model.
A neighbor told Fox 4 that the neighborhood is plagued by teens who roam the streets, harassing residents. "Every night you see teenagers like five or six yelling, music banging," Johnathan Neely said. "Why you not at home? Don't you got school tomorrow? I know school is out but summer jobs? Something to occupy your time but they be in the streets."
Sam's brother, Robert Morris, suspects his brother was returning home from a convenience store on Saturday night and probably looked like an easy mark because of his limp. When they tried to rob him, he said, his brother resisted.
"When that happened I'm sure he was trying to get away from him but he couldn't," Morris told Fox 4.
Detectives are searching for leads. The case is being investigated as a murder.
