Just after midnight on Tuesday, Cowboys nose tackle Jay Ratliff was driving his Ford pickup along State Highway 114 in Grapevine when police say he drunkenly crashed into an 18-wheeler, then a highway barrier. No one was injured. Ratliff, 31, refused a Breathalyzer test before bonding out of the Grapevine…
Note to self: Never ride a 4-wheeler on the runway at Lancaster Airport. That’s what some members of Texas-based Team Stunters were doing last week when they were nearly hit by a modified Pitts S2S biplane. The camera person is completely excused if they crapped their pants. The plane was…
When Mary Kay Beckman was ambushed in the garage of her Las Vegas home in January 2011, it made national headlines. That was partly because of the brutality of the attack. The attacker “knocked her to the ground, and began stabbing her repeatedly until he recognized that the knife broke,”…
In a federal courtroom in Fort Worth today, Ryan Walker Grant learned that he will have exactly 10 years in federal prison to ponder just where exactly he went wrong. After all, his plot to murder Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck and attorney Tom Brandt after the city effectively shut down…
Right now, there are three remaining Blockbuster stores in Dallas proper. That’s down considerably from the gazillions that once crowned street corners during the heady days of VHS, before movies could be conveniently dispensed from a red box or instantaneously zapped onto your telephone, and that number could drop even…
Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark court case that originated in Texas with Norma McCorvey and ultimately led to the Supreme Court sweeping away a number of state and federal abortion restrictions. Because of Roe, terminating a pregnancy in the first trimester is between a…
The Nacogdoches judge who granted a Douglass landowner’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Keystone pipeline back in November now is telling him to take his case to another court. County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz ruled last week that he could not hear Mike Bishop’s fraud…
If you don’t know anything about Elliott Naishtat, you can go here, where you’ll learn that he likes to color with crayons, wears the same shirt every July 4, is pretty sure he’d make a fantastic president and loves buffets. He’s also a Democratic state representative from Austin who, though…
In 1967, back when Helvetica was still brand new, American Airlines recruited Italian designer Massimo Vignelli to develop what would become the carrier’s logo for the next 46 years. It was simple, straightforward, and instantly recognizable: a pair of A’s, one red, one blue, separated by a stylized blue eagle…
In the lead-up to November 22, the city’s focus has been on Dealey Plaza and how to get it ready — and keep it clear of conspiracy types — for the official commemoration of JFK’s death there 50 years ago. But its neighbor one block to the east, Founders Plaza,…
The above photo was snapped at last night’s Dallas Stars game by Twitter user @EdCahill before making its way to Deadspin. Together with the Stars’ recent handling of an exceedingly dickish Cowboys’ Tweet, we’re getting the impression the AAC’s hockey residents don’t give all that many shits. Kudos to them…
This morning, the First Presbyterian Church hosted a gun buyback, offering cold, hard cash for unwanted firearms which will later be destroyed. The idea, as Rev. Bruce Buchanan told the Morning News, is to “make Dallas homes and families safer, one gun at a time.” As far as gun-control measures…
Mayor Mike Rawlings said today that he’s behind President Obama’s push for new restrictions aimed at curbing gun violence. “We already say we can’t own Stinger rockets. So the question is where does the line go? And the line being at semiautomatics is the right place,” Rawlings told the Morning…
Agents of nearly a dozen federal and local law enforcement agencies busted a large drug ring this week, arresting a dozen people and seizing 600 marijuana plants and 25 pounds of hydroponic weed. The sweep — conducted by Dallas PD, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security and the IRS,…
In 1969, Norma McCorvey was just 21 and living in Dallas with her father when she got pregnant for the third time. She was poor, working menial jobs and couldn’t afford another child. She wanted an abortion, but she also couldn’t afford the trip to one of the six states…
Just before midnight last night, an Uptown resident received a frantic text message from her friend: He had just been hit by a car and had fallen into Turtle Creek. He didn’t think he was going to make it. The friend immediately called police, who dispatched several units to canvass…
Johnny Manziel learned the hard way what happens when a suddenly famous college football player celebrates one of the more impressive individual performances in recent bowl game history by publicly guzzling Dom Perignon: People tsk-tsk and tell him to be a better role model. He’s now discovered what happens when…
At 7 p.m., a 41-year-old Dallas woman stepped onto an elevator at Founders Plaza that was already occupied by two men, one of whom police identified as 20-year-old JC Gholston. When the elevator reached the second floor, Gholston stepped in front of the woman, pulled out a black CO2-powered pistol…
On a Sunday night in January 2010, Johnson County deputies responded to a domestic disturbance call on a rural road a couple of miles south of Mansfield. The husband, 33-year-old Joshua Adam Lewis, had gotten drunk and begun arguing with his wife and insulting her dead father. The argument escalated,…
A clerk was working alone at the AZ Mart convenience store on Military Parkway in Pleasant Grove when a man walked in. He was a regular customer, police say, but this time he carried a large knife and demanded cash. When the money didn’t immediately appear, the man stabbed the…
Yesterday’s announcement that the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade is now the Dallas St. Patrick’s Day Parade seems to have been greeted with a collective, “Call it whatever the hell you want so long as there’s booze.” Look a bit more carefully, and the announcement included some ominous signs…
Back in 2011, a simpler time, the most heated gun-related debate in the Texas Legislature was over a provision allowing concealed weapons to be brought onto college campuses. That proposal seems almost quaint as the focus has shifted to proposals to arm elementary school teachers. That’s not to say that…
