Dallas police impounded nearly a dozen all-terrain vehicles Sunday after reports of reckless driving during the weekend’s icy conditions, the department said, including one response in Deep Ellum that led to an arrest on a child-endangerment charge.
The enforcement, led by the department’s Street Racing Task Force, came after temperatures plunged Friday evening and sleet and ice coated Dallas roads. Dallas police and other officials urged residents to stay off the streets.
“While our officers are working around the clock responding to hazardous winter weather, choosing to street race is not just reckless, it’s dangerous and irresponsible,” Chief Daniel Comeaux said in a news release Monday. “This behavior puts lives at risk and will not be tolerated in Dallas.”
ATVs drive along an icy Gaston Avenue across Good Latimer Expressway on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Dallas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
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Texas law generally does not allow off-highway vehicles like ATVs to be registered for use on public roads. It permits roadway operation in limited circumstances with an off-highway vehicle plate.
Police were sent about 2:29 p.m. Sunday to the 400 block of North Good Latimer Expressway near Elm Street after reports that ATVs were blocking the intersection and roadway, the department said. Officers arrived to find a Jeep Wrangler SUV driving recklessly and doing donuts in the intersection, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit.
“This is especially dangerous giving the icy road conditions at the time,” an officer wrote in the affidavit.
Officers stopped the vehicle and found an 11-year-old in the back seat without a seat belt on, the affidavit says. The driver, identified by police as Eber Rosario Soto, 23, was arrested and faces charges of endangering a child by criminal negligence, unlawful carrying of a weapon and reckless driving.
Rosario Soto was booked into the Dallas County jail, where he remained Monday on bonds totaling $12,500, jail records show. It was not clear whether he had an attorney.
Later Sunday, police were sent to the 200 block of July Alley, also in Deep Ellum, where officers found a group of ATVs parked in the roadway, according to the news release. Police said the ATVs did not have license plates, and seven were impounded.
Police also responded to reports of ATVs in the 800 block of South Riverfront Boulevard, where three more ATVs were towed as unregistered vehicles and taken to the Dallas police auto pound, the news release said.
Earlier in the day, a group of several hundred off-road vehicles, ATVs and dirt bikes gathered near a parking lot on Elm Street as part of a planned meet promoted on social media. They drove through the city streets with music playing and met at a Fuel City gas station on Riverfront Boulevard.