Late Saturday night, a jury arrived at the unanimous conclusion that George Zimmerman had not committed an act of murder when he shot an unarmed teen named Trayvon Martin. As Jim Schutze noted earlier, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which allows for the use of deadly force without the retreat…
A quick glance at Rode Don Simmons’ Facebook page is enough to tell you that the 21-year-old enjoys guns, but that’s par for the course in semi-rural North Texas. A young man can’t very well shoot ducks and feral hogs without a trusty gun or two. But Simmons’ passion for…
Cathedral Guadalupe — or, more verbosely, the Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady Guadalupe — is a magnificent building. Hewn from red brick and limestone, the stately, 111-year-old Neo-Gothic church stands sentry on the corner of Ross Avenue and Olive Street in the Arts District, housing the second largest Catholic conregation…
Early yesterday morning, around 4 a.m., Dallas police responded to a call at a Red Bird apartment complex: A 20-year-old woman, Shakeydra Freeney, was dead inside one of the units, having been shot in the face with a shotgun. There wasn’t any clear indication at the time of who’d killed…
Usually, catching a theft suspect takes at least a small amount of detective work. But Luis Paz made things easy for police, laying out a trail of bread crumbs at 10:30 Wednesday night leading directly to the front door of his Northwest Dallas home. To be accurate, it wasn’t actually…
Officer Craig Hermans hasn’t been arrested or charged in the federal investigation into an alleged steroid ring at the Arlington Police Department that’s already led to the indictment of one colleague and the suicide of another. But he was questioned in connection with the investigation and remains on administrative leave…
Since Congress started wrestling with stricter gun control laws early this year, school officials around the country have been on edge about how to handle threats of violence from students. There have been a lot of draconian responses in the last few months. In one case, an eighth-grader in West…
The Swiss Avenue Place Apartments, near the intersection with Peak Street, are several blocks and several social rungs away from the ritzy end of the East Dallas boulevard. The cars aren’t as nice, the surrounding homes not as well kept. There’s a lot more crime, too, mostly car break-ins, domestic…
Police still don’t know who bound, gagged and murdered 6-year-old Alanna Gallagher, whose naked body was found wrapped in heavy plastic along a Saginaw street last week. Their road blocks and search warrants have so far turned up nothing conclusive. In the meantime, the media now have a new, probably…
A week has passed since two teenagers walking through Saginaw discovered the body of 6-year-old Alanna Gallagher, naked, bound and gagged and wrapped in heavy plastic. No arrests have been made. Tips continue to flood in, and the town remains baffled and on edge. Investigators have said repeatedly that the…
Our regular Unfair Park captain, Eric, is on vacation, so I had the pleasure of perusing the weekend’s police reports, to make sure Dirk wasn’t drunkenly wandering Victory Park all sad and sidekick-less. It was a nice reminder that dear Lord, humans are weird. Here’s what I learned: High Heels…
With last call looming, a 28-year-old mom named Diana Salinas drove to Sanchez Restaurant and Bar in Oak Cliff early Sunday morning and made a bee line for her estranged husband, police say. She left her ill-advised companion in the car: her two-year-old son. After an argument about child support,…
Penny Terk, 73, was a former actress who’d become the toast of book review clubs across Dallas. In a few weeks, she was set to host her annual Summertime Showcase, a conclave for book club leaders and speakers, where “a LIMITED number of rectangular vending tables must be reserved in…
Death has the habit of sneaking up on its victims, catching them unaware and robbing them of a chance to collect their thoughts and give some final, purposeful statement of celebration or regret. If they are afforded that chance, the words tend to be delivered to a friend or family…
On April 4, 2012, in an act of mind-boggling cruelty, a 4-month-old lab-terrier mix was doused in lighter fluid and set on fire. The puppy suffered third degree burns to 70 percent of his body and died of its injuries 10 days later. Police eventually fingered four young men they…
Alan Carter is one of a dying breed. The 53-year-old’s a newspaper carrier who plies his trade every morning well before dawn, delivering some 400 copies of The Dallas Morning News to the diminishing segment of the population that still gets its news printed on paper. It’s a lonely job…
The weather on Sunday evening was unseasonably temperate for Dallas. The heat of the day, which barely cracked 90, faded rather quickly. By 6:30 p.m., it was pleasant enough for a quartet of diners at Campisi’s downtown location to dine al fresco. At least it was pleasant until Allen McRae…
Updated at 5:46 p.m.: WFAA is reporting that Ricky Don McCommas, the assault rifle-wielding man involved in a shootout at a parking lot outside of Granbury City Hall, had been charged with the alleged rape of his niece. He’d missed a court appearance Friday morning, and instead came to Granbury…
Police aren’t exactly clear why a South Dallas 15-year-old without a license happened to be driving through Far North Dallas a half hour before midnight Thursday. Also not clear is how someone barely old enough to sack groceries part time came to be in possession of $1,000 in cash. But…
In a perfect world, Tango Blast would be a cool, refreshing fruity beverage. But we don’t live in a perfect world and the name has instead been appropriated by a rapidly growing, extremely violent Texas gang with ties to Mexican drug cartels. It’s some 10,000 members strong, according to the…
On the same day a grand jury handed down indictments accusing former Kaufman County Justice of the Peace Eric Williams and his wife, Kim, of capital murder, she filed for divorce. According to a petition filed Thursday in district court, Kim Lene Williams is seeking to end her 17-year marriage,…
The iron railing surrounding Nicholson-Hardie’s plant nursery on Lovers Lane is as much rampart as it is fence. It’s called the Impasse Gauntlet, and its only slightly less intimidating than it sounds — eight feet tall and topped with fearsome tridents. Owner Josh Bracken invested in it a decade ago…
