William Youkers was on parole in 2011 when he choked his pregnant girlfriend in Plano. He pleaded guilty, and the judge was lenient, placing him in a community supervision program. But three months later, he tested positive for meth. He assured Judge Scott Becker that he was turning his life…
A while back, before his father retired as district attorney against a backdrop of small-town political intrigue, Collin County District Judge John Roach Jr. described his philosophy on family law in a less-than-hard-hitting interview with Dallas Child. His “obvious passion spill[ing] over in precise speech honed by years in the…
Their bio on Jam Base chalks it up to a “magical combination of talent, perseverance and opportunity,” but, whatever their secret, Forever the Sickest Kids has enjoyed a remarkably long run in the music business. The Dallas-based pop-punk band managed to land a major-label record deal months after its formation…
You’ve no doubt spent the 14 months since Doritos Locos Tacos were introduced wondering how Taco Bell came up with the brilliant idea of turning the popular chips into popular taco shells. If you just assumed this was the work of a dedicated, and probably high, Yum Brands food scientist,…
For the record, the jailer in the above photo no longer works for Dallas County. Rachel Leigh Graham lost her job and pleaded guilty to official oppression for slamming her handcuffed charge into the tile floor of the Lew Sterrett jail. But that doesn’t make the video, seen below in…
Justin Grogg was in town from Panama City on a business trip when he and a colleague went out on the town to sample the local fare. They went to the Red Lobster at Stemmons and Northwest Highway, and Grogg ordered a Budweiser. Grogg says it took only a second…
Filing a federal employment discrimination lawsuit is easy. All you need to offer up a not-transparently bullshit claim that you were discriminated against because of race, gender, age, disability, et cetera, is a right-to-sue letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to pay your filing fee. The bar is…
SMU agrees with a number of points former professor Patricia Davis made in the rather wild lawsuit she filed last month. Both agree, for example, that Davis is a woman, that SMU has 11,000 students and that Davis worked at the school until she was fired last October from her…
For eight hours, rifle reports echoed across the Anderton Whitetail Ranch in Hunt County. In the larger paddocks, a wildlife biologist standing in the bed of a white Texas Parks and Wildlife truck picked them off with a scoped .22- or .17-caliber rifle mounted to a tripod. Another shot them…
In the decade since it was founded in Dallas, IP Nav has established itself as a global leader in the increasingly lucrative business of “patent assertion,” offering clients the ability to “maximize the value of their IP assets.” Put more bluntly, it’s a patent troll, shaking down companies by threatening…
The 16-year-old girl who accused a former Highland Park baseball star of rape is now countersuing him in civil court. In March, after a grand jury declined to indict Ryan Romo on rape charges, the Romo family sued his accuser and her family, claiming, among other things, defamation and negligent…
Earlier this year we introduced you to Mike Bishop, the irascible ex-Marine with 20 acres in the path of the Keystone pipeline, just east of Nacogdoches. When we met him, the retired chemist and bio-fuel tinkerer was livid, cataloging the insults to his land — the ‘dozed crops, the clear-cut…
We’ve written about Kaitlyn Samuels twice: Once last February when her parents went before a military judge to argue that Tricare, the Department of Defense’s health insurer, should cover therapy costs for their severely disabled daughter, and again in October after Tricare ignored the judge’s order to do so. Kaitlyn…
Dominique Thornton did not testify in his trial for charges that he committed a string of armed robberies along the Katy Trail last May. It probably wouldn’t have done any good. He was IDed by victims as the gunman in the heists, and police found Thornton’s thumbprint on a stolen…
Teena Mathis has always said it was an accident. She had left her 15-month-old niece, Heidi, with her children on a backyard swingset while she stepped inside to answer the phone. While she was in the house, the girl wandered behind the swing, which hit her in the head. Heidi…
Back in March, after a grand jury declined to indict him on charges of rape, former Highland Park High School student Ryan Romo sued his accuser and her family. The complaint alleged five separate counts of misconduct, leveled at different family members. Among them: malicious prosecution, negligence and vicarious liability,…
With North Texas’ population exploding and near-perennial drought seeming more and more like a certainty rather than a fluke, state water planners have been scrambling to secure new supplies, going further and further afield in search of waterways that haven’t been tapped out. Several years ago, that quest took the…
Ever since prosecutors filed a federal lawsuit last May asking to seize nearly $500,000 of County Commissioner John Wiley Price’s allegedly ill-gotten gains, political observers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. An indictment was a month or two away, tops, it was predicted at the time. Any…
Last summer, Texas, Big Oil interests, the automotive industry and other assorted industrial polluters were dealt an unambiguous defeat in a legal challenge to dismantle greenhouse gas regulations. The Feds, a federal appeals court panel ruled, were “unambiguously correct” for setting limits on carbon dioxide and other pollutants — an…
Officer Jennifer Bell and Corporal D.J. Lusty remember the night of April 9, 2011 quite clearly. The Fort Worth cops were working off-duty traffic jobs at Texas Motor Speedway following the Samsung Mobile 500 when Bell spotted a golf cart driving on the grass. She watched as the cart laden…
The blog 5 days in Connecticut is a rambling, navel-gazing tell-all about a man’s struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. There’s little to distinguish it from the reams of self-published addiction stories that populate certain corners of the Internet. It would be an entirely unremarkable piece of work were it…
Police were on their toes last Memorial Day weekend, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2011 when a group of stunt motorcyclists succeeded in shutting down Central Expressway. Bikers did descend on Dallas that weekend — the Calatrava was a rumored target — but the havoc they wreaked was minimal…
