Richard Sheridan — perennial gadfly candidate, profane voicemail leaver and word-salad chef extraordinaire — has been arrested in connection with the June 2014 tagging of a number of Dallas buildings, including the Legacy of Love Monument in Oak Lawn, the Cathedral of Hope and the building where the Observer is…
Sometimes it’s hard for prosecutors to get a conviction. The case of Arlington’s “Black Hoodie Bandit,” judging from evidence the FBI says it found, will not be one of those times. Starting in November, the bureau says, Dana Campbell began robbing grocery-store bank branches — specifically First Convenience Banks. She…
In 2007, former television journalist and journalism professor Eric Gormly made history at the University of North Texas for suing one of his own students. In the suit, he accused two professors and the student of conspiring to give him a bad performance review that got him fired. School officials…
Susan Hawk, Dallas County’s newly elected district attorney, spent a month in rehab for prescription painkiller abuse during her campaign and accused her former top assistant, Bill Wirskye, of breaking into her home, the Morning News reported this morning. Friends and colleagues of Hawk told reporters Gromer Jeffers and Sarah…
District 3 might be the most important race in the upcoming Dallas City Council election. Incumbents Scott Griggs and Philip Kingston have taken the rare step of endorsing a candidate outside their own districts, giving their support to high school teacher Joe Tave. Vonciel Jones Hill, who represents District 3…
There’s a new plan for Dallas’ Fair Park making the rounds this week, one that would relegate the State Fair itself to a 84-acre section of the 277-acre park and tear down Gexa Energy Pavilion, and it has the State Fair worried. As things stand, the plan is just a…
The trophy is coming back to North Texas. Corey Knowlton, the Royse City hunter who bought the right to kill a Namibian black rhino at a Dallas Safari Club auction in January 2014 , has been approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to bring his spoils back from…
On Wednesday, the Texas House overwhelmingly approved a statewide ban on texting while driving, the third session in a row where this has happened. In 2013, the measure died in the Senate. In 2011, it was killed by Governor Rick Perry, who vetoed it on the grounds that it was…
People locked up in the Denton County Jail used to be allowed to see visitors two days per week. But when a company called Securus Technologies began offering a service for expensive virtual “visits” with jail inmates, things went down the way they usually do when Securus takes over. On…
The process, as described in a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday in Dallas, was simple. Recruiters would pay homeless people — including residents of The Bridge shelter in downtown Dallas — a fee, often $30, to visit a doctor’s office. The indigent recruits were given instructions on how to get a…
One night in August 2011, a half dozen cows escaped their pasture and wandered onto a semi-rural stretch of road in Amarillo. The driver of an approaching pickup slamed on the brakes, but not quite soon enough to keep the truck from entering a terrifying barrel roll. Bobby Tunnell, the…
Levi Pettit is sorry. The Highland Park grad, one of two University of Oklahoma students expelled this month for leading their Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers in a racist chant, spoke to reporters at Fairview Baptist Church in Oklahoma City after a closed-doors meeting with community leaders. “There is no…
Robert Durst, the New York real estate heir charged with murder after famously spilling his guts into an open microphone in the HBO documentary series The Jinx, has some mildly weird Dallas connections, as revealed by NBC’s Today Show and Candy Evans’ local real estate blog, Candy’s Dirt. Linda Walker…
Those who wanted a bit of theater at Dallas City Hall on Wednesday — us, for instance — didn’t get exactly what they wanted, but Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston made sure they didn’t go home empty handed. Kingston, the id of Trinity toll road opposition, and Vonciel Jones…
Texas is down to its last dose of lethal injection drugs. On April 9, pending court action, Kent William Sprouse — who killed a Ferris police officer and another man in 2002 — will be given that three-drug cocktail and Texas will become one of a number of states forced…
The presumption that court proceedings should be open to the public has been a feature of the American judiciary since around the time Englishmen in funny hats stepped off the Mayflower. It’s not directly addressed in the U.S. Constitution but it is enshrined in the founding documents of many states,…
This story starts at a Plano IHOP. Early on the morning of March 25, 2014,, Cierra Allyn Rounds and Glen William Brunton met Kathryn Grace Dirks, Rian Lashley and a heroin dealer Rounds knew as Jaymo for breakfast. As they ate, Rounds and her friends became aware that Lashley had…
Troy Causey, the Wilmer-Hutchins basketball player beaten to death outside his home one year ago today, should never have been in the situation that led to his death, his mother says. Causey was improperly recruited to play basketball at Wilmer-Hutchins while he was in the custody of the Dallas County…
Dallas Police Department’s Air 1 helicopter got an unexpected and unwanted guest last night. While the chopper was flying over Lake Ray Hubbard, a bird — initially reported to be a duck but later confirmed to be an American coot — flew through Air 1’s windshield, shattering glass and injuring…
Nancy Duarte steps out for her interview at Dallas County Jail with a black eye and scratches on her elbows. She doesn’t mind being in jail, because it feels no different from what her life used to be like. Before her arrest, she says, she was living with her aunt,…
Almost a week after Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings issued a memo to try to curtail City Council members’ responses to open microphone speakers at council meetings, two council members will take to the open microphone themselves on Wednesday to talk about the Trinity toll road. Rawlings’ memo came after March…
The news, at least as tweeted by the Dallas Police Department, is good. Of the more than 113,000 traffic stops performed by the department in 2014, only five resulted in racial profiling complaints being filed with DPD’s Internal Affairs Division. The raw data paints a murkier picture. Of those 113,000…
