Abel Garcia is several decades too old to be eligible for the services offered by Jonathan’s Place, a Garland-based nonprofit dedicated to helping abused and neglected children. But the 51-year-old isn’t one to let age stand in the way of his goals, which in this case was free clothing. Police…
Congratulations, Cowboys fans. When any rational human being would have long since turned away in disgust, you’ve stuck by your team, undaunted by nearly two decades of unrelenting mediocrity. Your patience has finally paid off — not with a Super Bowl victory, which is still probably too much to hope…
For several days now, state health officials have been sounding the alarm about a nascent measles outbreak in North Texas. As of Friday, there had been nine confirmed cases, a number that will grow as new reports from local health agencies filter up to the state. The epicenter of the…
Senator Ted Cruz no doubt hoped the release of his birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News would settle the question of whether he is a “natural born” American citizen and thus eligible to run for president. Instead, the revelation that Cruz is a dual Canadian-American citizen — which, given…
When he was a kid, before his mom died during an already difficult upbringing and left him to spend his teenage years shuttling from one foster family to the next, Trrance King lived near a fire station. (That’s how he spells his name, according to court records.) The men there…
You may remember Cedric Moses as the entrepreneur who tried to convince the Dallas City Council to implement a mandatory dog-poop-DNA-testing regime citywide and then, when that didn’t work, trotted out actor David Keith of An Officer and a Gentleman semi-fame to do the same. Moses failed to convince the…
Fat Texas residents are slowly realizing that they should bike more, according to a Texas Tribune article co-published in The New York Times this weekend. Sourcing mostly “city officials,” the report comes to the conclusion that fat Texans are biking more thanks to the efforts of — you guessed it…
Frederick Wright presumably knows a thing or two about the oil and gas business. He’s a petroleum engineer who has worked on both sides of the fence. He spent some time with the Bureau of Land Management. Eventually, he worked for more than a decade as engineer in oil and…
The party at 9807 Laneyvale Ave. in Pleasant Grove on Saturday evening started pleasantly enough. It was, after all, a celebration of the holy sacrament of baptism that had been performed earlier in the day. Then, Noel Lorenzo Hernandez crashed the party. Hernandez, a 21-year-old Irving resident, hadn’t technically been…
Arlington is celebrating this morning. After decades as the largest U.S. municipality without mass transit, the city now has a bus service. So park your Ford Excursion and prepare to retire your warmed-over gibes about Arlington as the ultimate suburban wasteland. All done? OK, now bring them back out of…
There’s something about the thought of air conditioning prisons that rankles Texas officials. Partly, it’s the cost: Cooling the 90 (out of 111) state-run prisons that lack any sort of climate control would run well into the millions. Partly, it’s a tough-on-crime thing: These are convicted criminals; nothing wrong with…
On Sunday afternoon, Terrell Cowherd’s father undertook the somber duty of going through his son’s things and offering an impromptu elegy to the reporters who showed up. “He always said Dad and Mom, thank you for everything,” he said. “Thank you for all you’ve given me, thank you for all…
A new, bullshit list has found that University Park is the most walkable neighborhood in all of Dallas-Fort Worth. Highland Park comes next and Addison ranks third. And then the list ends. Well, that settles it then. Come on Uptown, Oak Lawn, Deep Ellum, Lower Greenville and all of Oak…
When a choked-up Anthony Tovar announced to a gathering of parents and supporters in April that he would resign as principal of Sunset High School — for real this time — he wouldn’t delve too deeply into why. He’d already done so in an earlier conversation with the Observer back…
Tom Corea, the disbarred Dallas attorney charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients, is currently in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, where he’s spent every day since a judge learned in November that he’d covered his former Design District office with penis graffiti. He’ll be there at…
Last summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put Dallas-based power generator Luminant on notice, warning the utility that its northeast Texas Big Brown and Martin Lake plants were in violation of the Clean Air Act. The company’s coal-fired plants, EPA contended, had been modified, resulting in a “significant” increase in…
Dan Patrick, a Republican state senator from Houston and Tea Party darling, has officially been in the lieutenant governor’s race for almost two months now. Patrick, like the other challengers vying for the seat, has positioned himself to the right of incumbent David Dewhurst, attacking him for being too moderate…
Irving’s leaders take exception to Jim Schutze’s allegory of Valley Ranch — and, by extension, the city as a whole — as the washed-up hag in the corner of a seedy bar, her sobs wreathed in cigarette smoke. They haven’t addressed it directly, but the narrative they’re spinning is starkly…
It’s not hard to find pit bull puppies for sale on Craigslist. The tricky part is finding a seller, like 38-year-old Bryant Everett, willing to make the trip from his home in Fort Worth with three of the pups in a crate in the back in hopes of getting $150…
Azmi Elqutob never had a chance to hand over the money. The 66-year-old was behind the register at his Smokie’s Food Store, his family’s Fort Worth bodega, when Frederick Jones rushed in with a 9 mm pistol and a bandana over his face and fired twice. Jones grabbed a fistful…
This week, the Plano City Council voted to build a new, $1 million outdoor skatepark. McKinney opened one earlier this year. Arlington has plans to build a dozen. And in Dallas there’s a tiny, cheaply built, prefab affair tucked away in a small neighborhood park seven miles east of downtown…
Minnie Graham, a 98-year-old great-great-grandmother, kept telling her family that people were hitting her at Garland’s Winters Park Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. When her loved ones found her eyes blackened and her arms bruised, they demanded answers. Graham, they were told, had fallen out of her wheelchair. Her granddaughters didn’t…
