Boom!

This is just how much Dallas-Fort Worth's population exploded in the last decade

New residents mean more traffic.

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As anyone who lives here knows, the population of Dallas-Fort Worth keeps swelling.

New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau put that explosive growth into clearer perspective. Data from the 2020 Census released August 12 shows Dallas-Fort Worth is the country’s fourth largest metro area, with 7,637,387 residents counted. It had been the country's sixth largest metro area following the 2010 Census (6,366,542 residents).

DFW was one of only three U.S. metro areas to gain at least 1.2 million residents over the decade. Houston and New York City were the second and third.

Specific Fort Worth and Tarrant County "highlights" of the Census 2020 data include:

Fort Worth ranked as the fastest-growing big city in Texas between 2010 and 2020 (24 percent), followed by Austin (21.7 percent), Houston (9.8 percent), Dallas (8.9 percent), and San Antonio (8.1 percent).
Two of the five U.S. counties that picked up at least 300,000 residents between 2010 and 2020 are in Texas — Tarrant County (301,606) and Harris County (638,686).

“Many counties within metro areas saw growth [from 2010 to 2020], especially those in the South and West. However, as we’ve been seeing in our annual population estimates, our nation is growing slower than it used to,” Marc Perry, senior demographer at the Census Bureau, says in a news release.

All four of Texas' major metros moved up the ranks of the biggest U.S. regions from 2010 to 2020.

Austin — ranked 37th most populous metro in 2010 — now is the 28th largest, with 2,283,371 residents, surpassing Las Vegas (ranked 29th, with 2,265,461 residents) and inching closer to 27th-ranked Pittsburgh (2,370,930 residents).

Among 50 largest U.S. metro areas, Austin notched the biggest jump in population from 2010 to 2020 (33 percent), with Houston at No. 5 (20.3 percent), Dallas-Fort Worth at No. 6 (20 percent), and San Antonio at No. 7 (19.4 percent).

Houston is now the the country's fifth largest metro area, with 7,122,240 residents (No. 8 in 2010), and San Antonio ranks 24th, with 2,558,143 residents (No. 26 in 2010).

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Death Penalty

Tarrant County man gets death for murder of convenience store owner

Tarrant County Sheriff's Office

Christopher Turner

A man received the death penalty for his 2020 cold-blooded execution of a convenience store owner.

According to a release from the office of Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Christopher Karon Turner, 48, to death on November 20 for executing convenience store owner Anwar Ali during a robbery. Tarrant County Assistant District Attorneys Charles Boulware and Allenna Bangs represented the state.

On March 27, 2020, at around 6:15 am, Turner, a convicted felon, wore a surgical mask and a glove and entered the Super Big Country Mart in an unincorporated area of Tarrant County south of Fort Worth. There, he held a gun to the back of Anwar Ali, the 62-year-old store owner, and walked him through the store.

Ali did everything Turner demanded, including opening the cash register to give him money. And yet Turner forced Ali into the bathroom and onto his knees, and shot him in the neck. Ali was discovered, dead in the bathroom, about an hour later.

Turner fled the store in Ali's Toyota minivan with the money from the register and Ali's wallet. In the van, he found more than $50,000 cash in a black bag. Over the next few days, Turner went on a shopping spree, buying cars, jewelry, drugs, clothes, and more. He and others used cash and a credit card that belonged to Ali.

Turner fled to Colorado where U.S. Marshals arrested him. On his body they found a firearm which was determined to be the murder weapon.

"This was a premeditated, cold-blooded murder," Boulware told the jury. "From the moment he was charged with this crime, he has tried to escape responsibility."

Bangs noted that before this trial began, Turner obtained the names of jurors and their telephone numbers, and gave them to an inmate charged with murder. At the trial on November 20, as Bangs addressed the jury, Turner tried to hold up a sign to the jury but was handcuffed by Sheriff's deputies who removed him from the courtroom, while he yelled out "she lied."

Ali came to the United States from Pakistan decades ago to pursue the American dream. Ali's son, Hussein, spoke in the courtroom after the death penalty was announced. "Thank you for giving us justice," Ali said. "I hope there are no more devils like this person."