The Dallas Morning News is committed to writing about everyone killed in a murder in Dallas in 2024. We are aware that some of those killed had violent criminal histories themselves. This is one of those stories.
Laura Timmons said she always knew something bad would happen to her son, D'Marcus Deonta Lott.
Growing up, he had a certain attitude, she said, and he wasn't afraid of anyone. Because he was tall, he looked older than his age, which made him a target for older children. Timmons taught him to fight back.
The day he was shot, he told her he was going to meet a family friend who was talking nonsense. After he left, she called him and begged him to come home.
He never did that.
Now she talks to his portrait, which hangs on her living room wall, and cares for his treasured dog, an American Bully named Draco.
Lott died Feb. 16 at age 26 outside an apartment complex near UT Southwestern Medical Center. The coroner's records indicate that another man argued with Lott about money and killed him before getting into Lott's car and shooting himself.
Timmons said Lott spoke to her every day and was in love with his niece.
Court documents describe a man whose violent death followed a violent life.
In 2022, DeSoto police arrested Lott for beating his girlfriend with a belt and holding a gun to her head. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Lott also hit his girlfriend's 3-year-old with the belt and threatened to kill them both. When the child began to cry, Lott covered the boy's face and told him to be quiet.
After officers arrived, Lott attempted to flee, court records show. After finding more than $2,500 cash in Lott's pocket, officers searched the apartment and found more than 4 pounds of marijuana, scales and other drug paraphernalia.
Lott pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and agreed to take domestic violence and parenting classes.
Records show Lott was sentenced to short prison terms in 2023 for breaking into a vehicle and firing a gun at the apartment occupied by his grandmother.
Lott grew up in South Oak Cliff and played high school football. After graduating from South Oak Cliff High School in 2015, he received a scholarship to Trinity Valley Community College, his mother said, but decided college wasn't for him.
He worked in several warehouses, she said, describing him as an entrepreneur who also printed T-shirts. He had invested thousands of dollars in two male American Bully dogs that he wanted to breed.
“He didn’t bother anyone,” Timmons said. “Just don’t bother him.”
