Ah, Avenue Q at 1:50 in the morning—truly the crown jewel of Lubbock nightlife. Officers were dispatched to the Baymont Inn and Suites near Mac Davis and Avenue Q for a standard “check subject” call. What they actually found was 60-year-old Arnold Tomlinson lying on the concrete outside a room, suffering from severe injuries that proved fatal shortly after he was rushed to UMC.
Enter 37-year-old David Thomas, affectionately known on the streets as “DLock”. According to court affidavits, DLock called a witness over to the motel’s east side, engaged in an altercation, and then offered the helpful directive to call 911 after she noticed an older man lying on the ground covered in blood. The witness had to scramble into a room to snatch an unknown person’s cell phone just to dial emergency services, proving that basic room amenities are severely lacking in Central Lubbock.
Naturally, the motel’s surveillance camera—the unsung MVP of Hub City crime reporting—caught the entire chaos on tape. Security footage shows the victim exiting a room followed by a trio who turned the walkway into an outright melee. One man punched Tomlinson to the ground, a woman casually picked an item off the pavement before kicking the victim in the face, and Thomas was captured swinging an “unknown long, thin, reflective object” at the victim.
To top off the bizarre sequence, video shows DLock returning to the victim afterward to pick him up and move him around, as if a little post-assault repositioning was going to fix the situation. Investigators managed to match witness descriptions to the video footage and booked Thomas into the Lubbock County Detention Center on a murder charge, where he is currently chilling on a $500,000 bond.
If you ever find yourself looking for late-night lodging on Avenue Q, remember to bring body armor and leave your shiny reflective objects at home—unless you happen to have a half-million dollars lying around for bail.
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