Nearly a week has passed since adjunct professor Daniel Mashburn’s odd actions in his astronomy classroom at Tarrant County College caused his students to flee and call campus police, and he’s still not sure why everyone freaked out. He says he was just trying to make learning fun. “One of…
In a Jan. 9 article, the Dallas Observer spoke with Dallas County officials from pretrial services about the changes being made to help reduce the high number of poor people serving time in jail without being convicted of a crime.The changes were a response to the Texas Commission on Jail…
Josh Johnson had never seen pot trees before. They towered 14 or 15 feet in the air, their limbs blooming with marijuana flowers in the sunlight like rows of cornstalks. They weren’t nearly as tall as the Douglas firs covering the Pacific Northwest mountains nearby, but these plants would produce…
When he was first diagnosed with esophageal cancer, Bruce Corbitt thought he had a pretty good chance to beat it. As a heavy-metal vocalist for Rigor Mortis and Warbeast, he’d faced tough battles over the years and even survived a knife attack. He’s the kind of metalhead who answers the…
Mike Morath inherited one of the toughest jobs in Texas when Gov. Greg Abbott appointed him Texas education commissioner in 2015. At the time, he was a Dallas ISD trustee known for his reform work. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick praised Morath’s ability to lead…
Carrying a samurai sword is legal in most places in Texas since House Bill 1935 went into effect Sept. 1. Daggers, dirks, stilettos, throwing knives, poniards, spears, machetes and Bowie knives are all OK under the new law, as long as you don’t bring them to churches, bars, amusement parks,…
Now that North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, and President Donald Trump are bragging about who has the bigger nuclear button, a lot of buzz is bubbling up about nuclear preparedness, i.e., what to do in the event of a nuclear attack, besides die. Sorry, millennials, but it looks…
Ever since the Texas Commission on Jail Standards reported that more than 70 percent of Dallas County Jail inmates could not afford to pay bail, the Dallas County Criminal Justice Department and local judges have been struggling to get that number down by reforming the pretrial justice system. Dallas County…
State Rep. Jonathan Stickland is a conservative Christian Republican from Bedford known to elicit criticism from his fellow conservatives for the “blustering tea party politics” he fires off on the House floor in Austin. Texas Monthly named him one of Texas’ worst legislators in 2015. D Magazine followed by calling…
A single porch light shined on a white mobile home one mid-July night in a rural neighborhood north of Dallas, illuminating drops of blood that trailed down the porch’s faded blue wooden steps. More blood pooled at the bottom of the steps and stained the porch’s handrail and floor. Along…
The pain felt as if someone took an ice pick, stuck it in a fireplace, and rammed it between Scott Garrett’s neck and shoulders. He called it the worst pain he’d ever endured, and each time he tried to raise his head, it felt like someone was stabbing him again…
What a difference a day makes, especially for expectant mothers this time of year. For mothers-to-be with babies due about now, inducing labor before the stroke of midnight New Year’s Eve can be a money saver, especially for those with high insurance deductibles that reset Jan. 1. Pregnant women with…
A Dallas County judge awarded Ryan Crawford temporary custody of his 8-year-old son Wednesday afternoon after the boy’s 34-year-old mother was accused of faking his illnesses. Kaylene Bowen-Wright is accused of taking their son to doctors’ offices and hospitals in Dallas and Houston more than 300 times and putting him…
Anthony “Tony” Culler is starving himself in hopes the FBI will start an investigation. It’s been four weeks since he started his 50-day hunger strike, and he looks to be shrinking into his clothing in videos posted online. He’s got the ease of a Baptist preacher and shares his family’s…
Suspected serial killer William Reece was charged with Capital Murder by a Brazoria County Grand Jury for the abduction and murder of Kelli Cox who disappeared in the late 90s.
Denton police held an active shooter training for local churches in response to the First Baptist Church mass shooting in Sutherland Springs.
Dallas resident Penny Howard thought she would have longer with her 5-year-old daughter, Harper. Harper was born in April 2010 with a rare, life-threatening disorder called CDKL5 epilepsy. The girl died in January 2016, but her life and death are making an impact in the world of orphan diseases, the term for…
Dimevision Vol. 2: Roll With it or Get Rolled Over, the follow-up to Dimebag Darrell Abbott’s video memorial set, debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s DVD music video chart in its first week of release. The DVD/CD set includes more footage of classic moments of Abbott’s life and five previously unreleased…
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a small percentage of people who are unaware they have HIV account for nearly half of the ongoing transmission of the virus. The CDC says a majority of those unknowingly infected lived in Texas and other Southern states, where…
More than a year and a half after Joe Cripps’ disappearance, what happened to the internationally recognized percussionist is a still an unanswered question. Cripps was best known for his work with Denton-based, Grammy Award-winning polka band Brave Combo. He moved from Denton to his hometown of Little Rock in…
Travis Strickland has been fighting the war on drugs for more than a decade. He’s a sergeant in the Lufkin Police Department’s special services division, which includes the street crime and narcotics units. The job used to involve taking apart methamphetamine labs that sprouted like prickly pears around rural Texas…
Amanda Clairmont was a makeup artist. She had created a new Instagram account to showcase her work two weeks before she was found murdered in a vacant parking lot in Corinth, a suburb of 21,000 people about 30 miles north of Dallas. “Follow my new makeup Instagram account and support…
