There are some obvious parallels between Ethan Couch and Josh Brent. Both got drunk and caused fatal car wrecks. Both had the means to hire talented private attorneys. Both were given offensively light sentences that sparked outrage. To most observers, that’s where the similarities end. Couch is white, Brent black…
There’s no doubt that rookie Fort Worth cop Alex Hoeppner screwed up spectacularly on the morning of May 28. He and his partner, also a rookie, responded to the wrong house for a burglary call. When he encountered a man with a gun near the garage he opened fire, discovering…
At first, Mineral Wells police were stumped by Shannon Herrin Huddleston’s death. How could a grown woman, her home and person bearing no sign that she’d been attack, wind up locked in her own freezer? Things became clearer when the autopsy report came back in October and speculated that Huddleston…
Some might argue that Gary Lee Young was performing a public service as he hung around the parking lot of the Dallas International Street Church on South 2nd Avenue earlier this month. The Lord’s work, if you will. Not long after midnight on January 9, Young watched a would-be john…
Pro tip: When planning a bank heist, it’s best to eliminate or conceal any distinguishing features that might help cops identify you later. Exhibit A is this Fort Worth bank robber’s grotesque salt-and-pepper facial hair. Yes, the powder blue sweats are suitably nondescript, and the beanie-over-the-eyes trick is a nice…
A Dallas police officer was arrested today for allegedly raping a woman he’d pulled over. According to a DPD news release, officer La’cori Johnson stopped a vehicle on the 9300 block of Larga Drive on September 9, 2013. Johnson told the woman driving the car that she had an outstanding…
For a portrait of the Kafkaesque nightmare criminal residency restrictions can create, go read about the permanent sex offender camp that took root several years ago beneath Miami’s Julia Tuttle Causeway. Thanks to a local ordinance barring them from living within 2,500 feet of any place that children congregate, there…
For the past year Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc., one of the two big players in the red-light camera industry, has been embroiled in a bribery scandal in Chicago. The company, according to news reports, treated a senior transportation official to lavish vacations and had an unusually close relationship with bureaucrats…
With the knockout game having officially arrived in Dallas, and with the two documented cases here occurring in restaurant parking lots in northern Dallas, it would be only natural to assume that the man beaten with a baseball bat outside Smashburger on McKinney Avenue is a victim. Yet that doesn’t…
The circumstantial evidence against Charles Stobaugh is damning. His estranged wife, Kathy, was last seen on the night of December 29, 2004, setting out for his isolated farmhouse to discuss their divorce, set to be finalized the next day. Add in his domineering personality and his evident heartburn at the…
For 15 months, Sidelines Private Sports Lounge provided what it billed as “South Side’s Version of Upscale,” which included drinks, dancing, Madden tournaments and exotic dancers performing on the establishment’s prominent stripper pole. The problem, according to Dallas police, is that it was operating illegally, and it was doing just…
Google “Colten Moore” and you’ll find that there are two young North Texas men of that name currently making headlines. One, 24, from Krum , just scored an inspiring snowmobiling victory at the X Games, one year after brother Caleb was killed trying to do the same. The other, 18,…
When Dallas Police Chief David Brown quietly changed department policy to give cops who open fire on suspects three full days before making a statement, the rationale was that studies show that the stress an officer experiences during such an event can negatively affect their immediate recollection of it. It’s…
Like air marshals’, the identities of Argyle ISD’s “marshals” will remain secret. This anonymous contingent of staff members, known only to school administration, the local police, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, has been authorized to possess handguns on campus to respond to the threat of an “active shooter.”…
It’s not entirely clear from federal court documents when Jesse Brister earned the nickname “Bozo.” Probably, it was around the time he became a member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. In any case, he’s earned it. He proved it upfront when he joined an organization whose members have a…
Around 2 o’clock this morning Charles Pace, a 74-year-old grandfather, went to Denny’s on North Central Expressway to grab a bite to eat. Though just a few blocks from his apartment complex, he never made it inside. Before he could reach the door, he told police, he was jumped, set…
There was a brief time, not all that long ago, when discountmedspa.com was the Internet’s go-to place for gray market botulinum toxin, that Mansfield’s Laurie D’Alleva could call herself the Botox Queen. Then, Wired stumbled upon her site — and the how-to videos featuring D’Alleva injecting the product into her…
Dallas, we know you suck at coping with cold weather and that you would much prefer to step into a warm car on a winter morning. Trust us. We feel the same way. But leaving an unwatched car idling on a Dallas street is like wrapping a steak in bacon,…
Yesterday we introduced you to Ron Martin, a man who was arrested by Frisco traffic cops for holding a sign toward passing motorists that said “Police ahead.” Officer Thomas Mrozinski (that’s his police vehicle pictured above) was trying to catch drivers going over the speed limit that day. When he…
On Monday, Dallas Police Chief David Brown briefed the City Council on changes the department’s use-of-force training regimen. Before, training sessions were required once every two years; now, it’s quarterly or bi-monthly. To oversee the training, Brown added several high-ranking officers to oversee the “use of force team.” The overhaul,…
The good news is that Luis Rocha, 70 is recovering from last Sunday’s random beating outside the Mockingbird Campisi’s. He’s well enough to give TV interviews, anyways, and quip of the men who broke a dozen of his ribs and left him in the Baylor ICU, “Maybe they wanted my…
If you were in a particularly charitable mood and didn’t know much about the situation, you might credit Misrael Perla with trying to save Alexandra Julia Moreno. He did, after all, rush the 20-year-old Irving woman to the hospital when he discovered her unresponsive in July 2012. But then you…
