A week ago, the Frisco Police Department was convinced that it had a solid case against Pallavi Dhawan in the mysterious death of her 10-year-old son, Arnav, and was ready to tell everyone about it. “Officers asked if she had killed the child and Mrs. Dhawan nodded her head ‘yes,'”…
Frisco has some sort of ordinance that prosecutes humans who hold signs. The police know this, because they used that ordinance as an excuse to bust the man who waved a “Police Ahead” sign at passing motorists. As we told you last month, Ron Martin was arrested by the very…
Ethan Couch, the 16-year-old from Keller who drunkenly ran over four pedestrians, then got probation after pleading affluenza, was back in court yesterday to learn the conditions of his sentence. Reporters were barred from the courtroom by District Judge Jean Boyd, who, according to the Tarrant County DA’s office, ordered…
Michael McDowell could have quit while he was ahead. During more than a decade spent posing as a military officer, he’d won heartfelt acclaim from military brass like CIA director David Petraeus, gotten behind-the-scenes access to the Washington Navy Yard, convinced the state of Texas to give him special Purple…
Dallas has never been able to clear the homeless from downtown streets, though not for lack of trying. Bans on panhandling, feeding homeless people, library benches and sleeping in public have provided city officials with helpful tools, but they have proved inadequate. Or perhaps it’s just that because they weren’t…
At first blush, the death last week of Frisco 10-year-old Arnav Dhawan seemed like another one of those too-gruesome-to-contemplate, too-compelling-to-turn-away stories of child abuse that flash across the local headlines with disturbing regularity. According to police, the boy’s mother, 38-year-old Pallavi Dhawan, confessed to murdering her son while her husband…
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…
