It remains one of the creepiest instances of child exploitation North Texas has ever seen, and now a court has sentenced Randy Ray Wesson to 30 years in federal prison for committing it. Sometime in January 2014, Wesson met Ricardo Lugo, 17, on Instagram. Wesson lived in Hurst. Lugo lived…
Shawn Diamond, the guy who was shot while charging a Dallas police officer at Love Field with a landscaping rock, is out of the hospital. Diamond, 29, was booked into Dallas County Jail late Monday for domestic violence assault and assault of a public servant. Diamond’s long North Texas ordeal,…
Sometime around noon Friday, there was a shooting just outside the terminal at Love Field. Bryan Armstrong, who says he’d just got off a flight at the airport, captured the incident on video, which appears to show a Dallas police officer shooting an individual just outside Baggage Claim Door 3…
Marijuana wasn’t always illegal in the United States. In colonial times, hemp was used as legal tender in colonial Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. In the 1800s, cannabis was ubiquitous as an ingredient in tinctures and pharmaceuticals. Its highly concentrated extract, hashish, enjoyed a burst of popularity in mid-century, captured in…
Somehow, Ken Starr keeps making Baylor’s expanding sexual assault catastrophe even worse. Friday morning, a Waco TV station released the full video of an interview it conducted with Starr on Wednesday shortly after he made the decision to resign as chancellor of the university. During the interview, KWTX’s Julie Hays asks…
If Joshua Barton wanted to test the chair he sat in when his blood drawn after his arrest for DWI in 2015, then he should have gotten sick right away, Texas’ 5th Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. Because he didn’t, the level of cleanliness in the room police use to…
Baylor has done the bare minimum it had to do after revelations of a campus culture that turned its back on, and often actively worked against, victims of sexual assaults committed by members of the school’s football team. Art Briles, the former Stephenville High School and University of Houston head…
There’s a tunnel connecting the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to the U.S. Agency for International Development office building across the street. It’s a popular — and safe— thoroughfare for the diplomats, accountants, Foreign Service officers and non-governmental agency workers involved in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Jeff Millslagle is walking through…
Headless, that’s how Jubal Alexander was found. Sitting in his blue Chevy pickup, parked underneath a bridge near a boat ramp in Brazoria County, he hadn’t been heard from since April 27, local news reported. Even though he worked overnights as a pipe cutter at a local chemical plant, the…
Two men were killed by Garland police Sunday night after they opened fire on a Garland ISD security guard outside of a Mohammed caricature contest. The event, held at the Garland ISD event center, was organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which has been classified as an anti-Muslim group…
The April 17, 2013 West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people, destroyed more than 500 homes and left a crater 93 feet wide and 12 feet deep was caused by a fire that was intentionally set, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday. “We have…
In the months before she was murdered in Midlothian’s Creekside Church of Christ on April 18 while setting up for her fitness class, Missy Bevers was engaged in an online relationship that turned “flirtatious and familiar” Midlothian police said in a search warrant released Thursday. Beginning in January, Bevers communicated…
Former Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel turned himself into Dallas County authorities Wednesday afternoon. His surrender came after a Dallas County grand jury indicted him last week for assault causing a bodily injury to a member of his household, a misdemeanor. Manziel is accused of hitting his…
For supporters of equal rights and equal protection, the outcome of Monday night’s Rockwall City Council meeting was good. Despite the best efforts of Mayor Jim Pruitt, the city did not pass a bathroom ordinance that would’ve required city facilities and businesses to make sure customers use the restroom matching…
The Department of Justice has ended it’s long-term freeze of federal forfeiture funds from the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. Monday, District Attorney Susan Hawk announced that as of March 14 her office had assured the feds that it had taken appropriate measures to ensure that forfeiture funds were being…
A Kimball High School student’s week got off to a bad start Monday, Dallas ISD police say, when he shot himself in the leg at the end of first period. The student, who has not been identified, was able to get inside with the gun because typical metal detector policies…
They aren’t NERF guns, but the “sponge guns” the Dallas Police Department will get aren’t lethal either — or mostly not lethal, rather. DPD Deputy Chief Jeff Cotner introduced the guns Thursday at the Safer Dallas Better Dallas meeting a police headquarters. They’ve got a 14-inch barrel, shoot 40 mm…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown is on the ropes. Thanks to an increase in violent crime over the first third of 2016, discontented police unions and a City Council that’s seemingly grown weary of his days as chief seem numbered. The media, the Observer included, has been all over crime…
Friday morning, four days after the murder of his daughter-in-law, Missy Bevers, Randy Bevers, her father-in-law, brought a bloody shirt into Midlothian’s Dry Clean Super Center. He told the clerk taking his clothes that blood on the white shirt was animal blood. Later that afternoon, according to a search warrant…
Helena Tantillo, a former Austin tech executive on the outer edges of the federal corruption case against Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, was sentenced Friday to six months in federal prison for lying to FBI agents investigating the case against Price. Tantillo’s company, BearingPoint, employed Christian Campbell as a…
Midlothian police, it seems, are not really any closer to finding out who killed Missy Bevers, the Camp Gladiator instructor found dead inside Creekside Church of Christ just after 5 a.m. Monday. Friday afternoon, for the third time, the released additional footage of the person they believe is Bevers’ killer, vandalizing…
Maybe, Missy Bevers’ killer was a woman. Maybe not. Maybe Bevers was singled out, hunted down after she made it clear where she’d be before sunrise Monday. Or maybe she walked in on a burglary. All of those possibilities are plausible and all have been cited by Bevers’ family or…
