An affluent Keller teen who killed four people while driving drunk and stoned on Valium has become the latest object of outrage. Ethan Couch, 16 at the time of the crash, was handed 10 years of probation, which will include a stint at a pricey rehab paid for by his…
It took a Parker County jury all of five minutes on Thursday to convict 44-year-old Dana Brock of burglary. The evidence, after all, was pretty incontrovertible. Surveillance video showed her stealing a weedwacker and power washer from an Aledo garage last May. But that’s not what made Brock famous. Last…
Smokin Dragon Gifts, with its wide array of smokes and smoking accessories, including a delightful selection of novelty pipes (see: Mario, Angry Birds, the “Despicable Me” minions) and a presumably high percentage of cash transactions, might seem like an ideal target for the criminally inclined. Bad idea. Robbers and shoplifters…
Police in Parker County had been watching Michael Fred Wehrenberg’s home for a month when, late in the summer of 2010, they received a tip from a confidential informant that Wehrenberg and several others were “fixing to” cook meth. Hours later, after midnight, officers walked through the front door, rounded…
There are some murders that are so carefully planned that police spend months or years trying to piece together clues. There are others in which the suspected killers, through carelessness or lack of foresight, practically walk themselves into the jail cell. The slaying of 31-year-old Jose Orta-Sanchez is decidedly in…
It’s been a traumatic and deeply strange week for Crawford and Mary Clay Gupton. After last week’s ice storm, someone sawed the lock off the gate of their Fort Worth backyard and stole Heidi, their greater Swiss mountain dog. Then the thief, using the handle dogthedogsaver, took to Reddit to…
Three days later, the country continues to seethe over Tarrant County Judge Jean Boyd’s decision to let 16-year-old Ethan Couch off with probation for killing four people and injuring several others near Burleson during a drunken joy ride on Father’s Day weekend. It’s an absurdly light sentence given the amount…
It was around 4 a.m. on Wednesday that Chauncey Taylor, a 35-year-old Dallas man, began chatting with an individual on Quest Chat, a phone-chat line that bills itself as a place to “meet sexy local singles.” The paramour’s gender isn’t specified by the police report filed that morning, but Quest…
A Duncanville City Councilman was arrested by the city’s police department after his wife accused him of stealing her cell phone and assaulting her, court records show. Mark Cooks was elected to the Duncanville City Council in 2012. More recently, in June, the Duncanville City Council in June selected him…
There’s no doubt that Ethan Couch, 16, is guilty of drunkenly killing four people in a deadly car crash in Burleson. Last week, the teen pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication manslaughter stemming from a June 15 wreck in which his Ford pickup, going 70 in a 40-mph zone,…
For a brief moment Tuesday evening, it seemed that the Dallas Police Department had learned something from the case of Bobby Gerald Bennett, in which an officer, unprovoked, shot a mentally ill man in a Rylie cul-de-sac. Rather than waiting for a damning video to emerge showing that Monday afternoon’s…
The way police told it, 76-year-old Chung Kim simply exploded. The couple who lived upstairs with their five children dumped dog poop on the back porch of his Abrams Road condo, so he pulled out a handgun and murdered them in cold blood. In a series of jailhouse interviews, Kim…
Those who could stay off the roads on Friday did so, but truckers, the grease that keeps American commerce humming, couldn’t rest. They had consumer goods to deliver, groceries to restock, gasoline stations to replenish. At around 3:30 p.m., police say Martin Barrera was transporting a particularly precious load of…
Texas Rangers outfielder Leonys Martin followed a risky but well-trodden path to the Major Leagues. Like many Cuban ballplayers before him, he defected in 2010 while in Japan for the World University Baseball Championship. He made his way to the United States several months later and signed a lucrative, $15.5…
The kids in Head Start just can’t catch a break. If it’s not the federal government shutting down or arbitrarily cutting funding to the low-income preschool program, it’s petty thieves breaking into their classrooms. At 4 a.m. on Wednesday, one such criminal broke into Head Start of Greater Dallas’ preschool…
A Texas state trooper was arrested in Cleburne Tuesday night after allegedly buying 6 grams of methamphetamine. According to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, 47-year-old Jimmy Jay Gillman, an officer in the Texas Department of Public Safety’s commercial vehicle enforcement unit, was picked up just after 9 p.m. in front…
Less than four months after taking over as executive director of the Rockwall Housing Development Corp. in June 2009, assuming full control of the nonprofit’s finances and The Meadows, its 36-unit public housing a couple of blocks off Interstate 30, Jennifer Tyson made out a check to “reimbursement,” took it…
The house on Allencrest Lane — a tidy four-bedroom, three-bath ranch-style in North Dallas — isn’t the first place one would look for a weed-growing mastermind named Bone. Nevertheless, that’s where DEA agents tracked down 37-year-old Brian Edward Deloney in June 2010, not to mention several gallon-sized bags of hydroponic…
On October 14, Bobby Bennett was scooting across a cul-de-sac in an office chair in front of two advancing Dallas police officers. He held a knife, but he stood flat-footed, his arms at his sides, a safe distance from the cops. Seconds later, Officer Cardan Spencer inexplicably opened fire. Bennett…
Teresa Mendez no doubt looked like an easy mark as she stepped to the front door of her Jefferson Boulevard apartment Sunday night. Shouldn’t be any trouble to sneak up behind her, flash a knife and make off with her purse. But Mendez’s would-be robber never quite made it to…
Last August, a couple of years removed from a two-year stint in the Texas prison system, John David Waguepack sat down for a thoroughly fascinating Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” or AMA, in which he offered a highly detailed, unvarnished glimpse of life behind bars. Among the subjects he touches on…
An Arlington head shop clerk is facing murder charges after allegedly gunning down a suspected shoplifter on Tuesday. Police arrived at Smoking Dragon Gifts in the 5900 block of South Cooper Street just before 11 a.m. Tuesday to find Jonathan Brian Lambert, 28, and another employee holding two other men…
