Mark Bumpers was standing behind his Red Bird home late on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 26, when a stranger walked by. In one arm, he carried a leaf blower. Tucked beneath the other was a DVD player. He pushed an electric lawnmower with his free hand. The man paused…
The feds were quite pleased in 2010 when Operation Greedy Grove, their months-long takedown of a Pleasant Grove-based crack ring, resulted in 28 arrests and the seizure of several kilograms of cocaine, more than a dozen guns, and $210,000 cash. But the guys they picked up — “Rat,” “Ron Don,”…
At closing time Tuesday night, the cash register at Afrika Fusion came up short. The restaurant’s manager, Mondi Baskin, recounted the money and checked her math again. It was stil short. Baskin narrowed the source of the discrepancy to one of the servers, a woman who’d been working at the…
A few months back, we broke the very important news that Dallas is in midst of an epidemic of hair weave heists. Sometimes, the thieves would try to palm a few packages while pretending to shop. Other times, they went for volume, knocking holes in the wall of beauty supply…
Jimmie Jerome Hiners, aka Jimmie “Nookie” Hiners, is kind of an open book. The marijuana leaf tattooed on the front of his neck tells you that he really likes weed, probably too much. The word “Blood” on his left arm tells you that he claims affiliation with that particular street…
The surveillance camera shows the whole room, not that there’s much to see. Mainly just a desk, an office chair, and a door leading to another, smaller room in the back. The footage from March 1, 2012, begins right at 4 p.m. with Michael Meyler, a 44-year-old Russian-born jeweler, occupying…
This year the Texas legislature approved a measure that requires the Texas Juvenile Justice Department to cut $23 million from its budget and continue paying for five of its six secure facilities by the first day of 2014, meaning that one of those six facilities has to go. To meet…
The smoke has cleared since gunfire erupted on Babbling Brook Drive in Saginaw as police executed a search warrant on 17-year-old Tyler Holder, the teen accused of murdering 6-year-old Alanna Gallagher. Holder is reportedly in critical condition at a local hospital, and the police officer who was shot, identified yesterday…
Bitcoin, the decentralized online virtual currency, just hit a milestone of monetary street cred: It’s allegedly been used in a Ponzi scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it has charged Trendon T. Shavers of McKinney for defrauding investors in his Bitcoin company, Bitcoin Savings and Trust…
Craig Watson had seen his share of hard times since leaving the military. The 51-year-old was homeless, chronically unemployed and isolated from his family, who live 1,000 miles away in Florida. Still, things had been looking up as of late. He’d been in contact with the Veterans Administration, which was…
The three weeks that have passed since the body of 6-year-old Alanna Gallagher’s was found by teenage passersby in Saginaw, naked, bound and gagged, and wrapped in heavy plastic, have been unnervingly quiet. Police have been following up on leads, rummaging through Alanna’s things, and otherwise turning over every rock…
The 1973 death of Santos Rodriguez was almost unspeakably barbaric. The 12-year-old and his brother David were picked up from their grandparents’ house in what was then Little Mexico (now Uptown) in the early hours of July 24 and taken to a Fina station on Cedar Springs Road, where someone…
Barring a stay of execution, Douglas Feldman is scheduled to die in nine days. His petition for a state writ of habeas corpus based on ineffective assistance of counsel has gone nowhere. He claims his trial attorney failed to investigate the role his alleged bipolar disorder played in the murders…
The hydroponic marijuana-growing community has suspected for a while that they’re being watched, and for good reason. By the DEA’s own account, law enforcement has turned its attention increasingly toward indoor growing operations as a quarter century of an aggressive eradication campaign has forced an increasing number of pot farmers…
On Thursday morning, as much of Dallas was commuting to work, a family squabble broke out in the alley behind the 1800 block of Angelina Drive in West Dallas. It’s not clear from police descriptions what sparked the fight nor, a police spokesman said, did responding officers note the family…
Here’s how the Dallas Police Department described last night’s officer-involved fatal shooting in Pleasant Grove in 1:44 a.m. Facebook post: On July 17, 2013, at approximately 10:00 pm officers responded to a burglary in progress at the 1600 Block of Conner Dr. Upon arrival, officers observed one suspect inside of…
Police had a weird and somewhat wild Wednesday. Here are some highlights from yesterday’s police activity: Dining In: At some point between 1 and 7 a.m., someone broke into the banquet hall of Skyline Ranch on Wheatland Road and helped themselves to $30 worth of food. They dined in, then…
Stephen Paulsen is, for a few more seconds at least, the principal of Morton Elementary School in Arlington ISD. He’s spending part of the summer in Florida, partly to visit his mother and father, who has Alzheimer’s, and partly, according to Boynton Beach police, trying to seduce someone he thought…
Neola Robinson told police that she’d last seen her husband on Memorial Day 2010, when he’d left their Tarrant County home and run off with another woman. That wasn’t entirely far-fetched. Ervin “Shorty” Robinson had already been married several times when he and Neola got together. Still, something about the…
Police don’t say why 24-year-old Victor Cruz was walking down a dark street in Pleasant Grove at 4 o’clock on Monday morning with his backpack. That’s just where he happened to be when the silver Pontiac pulled up beside him. The man that stepped from the driver’s seat was carrying…
Robert Lewis III never meant for any of the assault rifles he assembles in his Northwest Dallas home to wind up hidden in a pickup truck bound for Mexico. He considers his gun-making more hobby than profession, though he did reportedly sell some to a guy down in Houston from…
Back in April, Coppell Deputy Police Chief Matthew Kosec abruptly resigned from the department. He didn’t give a reason, nor did the city, which said only that he’d been on administrative leave for weeks while an internal affairs investigation was conducted. Meanwhile, both The Dallas Morning News and CBS 11…
