A significant police presence responded to a fatal shooting scene at a park near Woodrow Wilson High School, where students were temporarily placed on lockdown.

DALLAS — A Woodrow Wilson High School soccer player has died and another person has been taken into in custody in connection with a fatal Thursday afternoon shooting at a park located near Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas, Dallas ISD sources told WFAA.

The victim was taken to the hospital where he later died, DISD officials also told WFAA. 

Neither Dallas Police nor Dallas ISD have released the identities of the person who was shot or the person who was arrested, but Dallas ISD confirmed to WFAA that the victim was a senior at the school and on the soccer team. Dallas police sources told WFAA the suspect is also a Woodrow Wilson High School student.

Dallas police sources also told WFAA that the Woodrow Wilson High School students were playing with a gun when the firearm went off, killing the soccer player.

Students inside the high school, located across the street from the scene at Willis C. Winters Park on S. Glasgow Drive, were initially placed on lockdown as police continued to investigate the scene, officials confirm. As of 5 p.m., students were starting to be released from the school.

Dallas ISD officials said they will have additional precautionary patrols on the Woodrow Wilson campus on Friday. When reached for comment, the district reiterated that the shooting did not occur on the campus, but in the parking lot of a park near the school.

Chopper video showed students at the nearby J.L. Long Middle School, located on the opposite side of Woodrow Wilson High School and slightly more removed from the park, were released for the day at their normal time. A lengthy traffic backup in the area could be seen as cars waited to pick those students up.

Numerous police units could also be seen in chopper footage, with officers focusing on a small black four-door vehicle parked next to a large white trailer. Police at the scene confirmed to WFAA that their investigation was centered around a shooting near that car in the parking lot of Winters Park, near the Santa Fe Trail.

Willis C. Winters Park was formerly known as Randall Park. It was re-branded to honor Winters, former director of the Dallas Park and Recreation Department, when he retired from his post with the city in 2019.

Woodrow Wilson High School was named for the 28th president of the United States, and it opened in 1928 — four years after the former president’s death and seven years after he finished his second term in the White House. 

Legend has it that the school holds a slice of cake from the 1913 wedding of President Wilson’s daughter in one of its cornerstones. As the story goes, the cake was sent by a Texas-raised bridesmaid in the wedding to her cousin in Dallas; it is not entirely clear how the cake survived the 13-plus years between the wedding and the school’s opening.

The high school’s mascot is the Wildcats. Known as “Heisman High”, it was the first high school in the nation to earn the distinction of boasting two Heisman Trophy winners among its alumni base: NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Tim Brown, who won the award celebrating the nation’s best college football player in 1987, and 1938 winner Davey O’Brien, for whom college football’s annual award honoring the top quarterback in the country is named.

Other notable Woodrow Wilson alumni include Dallas real estate mogul Trammell Crow; actor Burton Gilliam; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bassist Dusty Hill of the iconic Texas rock ‘n’ roll band ZZ Top; Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Steve Miller of the legendary Steve Miller Band; and WFAA’s own Jerry Haynes, who helped raise generations of Dallasites as the children’s television host known as Mr. Peppermint.