Free Republic

In the ongoing investigation of the murder of an innocent couple during a Houston no-knock raid, two police officers have been indicted by a Harris County Grand Jury. On 28 January, 2019, a no-knock raid was executed at 7815 Harding Street, the residence of a longtime married couple of modest means, Dennis Tuttle and his wife of twenty years, Rhogena Nicholas. Neither of the couple had any significant police record.Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were the victims. After the police broke down the door and shot the family dog, Dennis Tuttle fired back in defense. It was claimed he wounded...

On the heels of the city's first case of measles in 20 years, another vaccine-preventable disease, rubella, has been confirmed in Austin. Austin Public Health says this is the first case of rubella in Travis County since 1999. Rubella is covered by the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. While Austin/Travis County has a relatively high vaccination rate, there are pockets of communities where vaccination opt-outs bring herd immunity to an unstable status. Rubella is less contagious than measles, but the virus has similar symptoms and is contracted the same way. Rubella is spread mainly through droplets that come from...

Alvin, Texas— Down in Alvin, it's the talk of the town. The loud boom heard Saturday night was unlike anything the Alvin residents had heard before. But the story gets a bit more bizarre. It wasn't just Alvin. The KHOU 11 newsroom was flooded with reports of the same loud boom all across the viewing area. ALVIN, Texas — Down in Alvin, it's the talk of the town. "It was like boom," said one Alvin resident. "We both jumped up and said what was that. It wasn't someone knocking on the door. Our whole house shook." The loud boom heard...

The Dallas Police Department is investigating the shooting death of an alleged armed robber that occurred late last night in west Dallas. Officials say a homeowner was hosting a social gathering in the front yard of a house when three suspects robbed the party at gunpoint. One of the individuals at the party, who police say is a licensed handgun carrier, produced his weapon and shot one of the robbers. One robber was shot and two others fled the scene. The injured robber was transported to the hospital and pronounced deceased.

... California is one of many states to ask teachers and textbooks in recent years to cover the contributions of specific immigrant groups, including Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders, European-Americans and Mexican-Americans. These additions are part of the reason California books are almost always longer than their Texas counterparts. California’s Board of Education adopted an expansive 842-page social studies framework in 2016. Two years later, Texas’ school board streamlined its social studies standards, which are now laid out in 78 tightly compressed pages. Critics of California’s approach say that making state standards and textbooks longer and more inclusive can be overwhelming to...

CANTON, Texas — Police say alcohol played a contributing factor when a man threatened to kill New Year's Eve partygoers in Canton, Texas, and was himself shot and killed by an armed guest. On January 1, 2020, at approximately 2:30 a.m., the Canton Police Department, Van Zandt County Sheriff's Office, and the Texas Department of Public Safety responded to a residence in the 500 block of Buffalo Street for a reported shooting. Upon arrival, police discovered 61-year-old Alan Bates of Plano, Texas, deceased of multiple apparent gunshot wounds. Bates, according to police, was an attendee at the New Year's Eve...

On 30 December, 2019, Jack Wilson, the congregant of the West Freeway Church of Christ, in White Settlement, Texas, who stopped the attack, gave a lengthy, on-camera interview of what happened from his point of view. I first found the interview on the bigcountry.com website. A few hours later, it was posted on Youtube.com as from KETKnbc.  The video interview is 18 minutes and 44 seconds long, done at Jack's private range. The video is professionally done. Peculiarly, I have not found who the interviewer is. She is an attractive, tall, well dressed black woman with an incredible voice.  I...

Screenshot from live feed from West Freeway Church of Christ, text and arrows by Dean Weingarten On 29 December, at about 10:50 a.m. a masked attacker, who had sat in the service at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, close to Fort Worth Texas, opened fire, first on an armed church member, then on an unarmed congregant. The attacker is shot by another armed congregant. The action was over in six seconds. By the 35 second mark, there were six to seven armed congregants at the scene. There was no crossfire. There was no mistaken identity shooting....

Atatiana Jefferson family photo/CNN, scaled by Dean Weingarten On 12 October 2019, Officer Aaron Dean shot and killed Atatiana Koquice Jefferson in her home, at about 2:33 a.m., by firing through a window, into a dark room at the back of the house. A neighbor had called the police because he noticed the doors of the house were open in the early morning hours. He believed he was calling for a welfare check. The police response was not what would commonly be reasonable for a welfare check. The call to the officers from dispatch was for an “open door” or...

Freezing overnight temperatures and growing frustration over long waits to get an initial interview with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in El Paso are to blame, Mexican officials and activists told Border Report. The camps fashioned out of blue tarps and black plastic sheets sprung up in September south of the Paso del Norte and Zaragoza international bridges, as well as in a park near the Bridge of the Americas. The camps at one point held up to 3,000 people, mostly families, but as of Monday, only about 600 remained, according to Juarez police. Activists in El Paso who have...

A body found inside a northwest Harris County home is believed to be that of missing Austin mother Heidi Broussard, according to sources. An autopsy will likely be performed Friday. At least one person is in custody. A 1-month-old girl was found alive inside the same house on Bo Jack Drive near Jersey Village, where officers and agents from the Texas Rangers, Department of Public Safety, FBI and the Austin Police Department searched for hours overnight.

A proposal for a $569 million bond to build two new high school buildings in Midland failed by 25 votes in the November election, a margin slim enough it set off calls for a recount. The ballots were recounted manually, and to the delight of Midland ISD officials, the results flipped and the proposal passed by a margin of 11 votes. But last week, a Midland elections staffer found a box on the bottom of a shelf in the office containing 836 ballots that weren’t tallied in the recount. Those votes threaten to again reverse the election results, which school...

President Donald Trump aims to build (has already ready funded) 166 miles of border barrier in Texas... Land acquisition in the Rio Grande Valley is about to enter a new phase this week, as U.S. attorneys began filing initial petitions in court while making cash offers to property owners, according to Justice Department officials with knowledge of the process. On Friday, the federal government filed its first land acquisition case to condemn nearly 13 acres of private property in the Rio Grande Valley, a parcel near the river levee in Hidalgo County. The owner was offered $93,449 in compensation for...

James Scott Reed, 40, died early in the morning on Feb. 27 in an exchange of gunfire with police after Killeen officers executed a no-knock search and arrest warrant at around 6 a.m. at a duplex at 215 West Hallmark Ave. SWAT officers were met by gunfire as they entered the residence, police said. During the raid, Custance, who was indicted in June, fired into the rear of the residence and then later attempted to conceal or reload the rifle magazine in order to hide the fact he fired the rounds, investigators determined. The shots didn’t hit anyone, but firing...

A Texas teacher who lost her job after asking President Trump on Twitter to remove the “illegal students from Mexico” from her school has won an appeal to get her job back. Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath ruled Monday that the series of offensive tweets sent in May by Georgia Clark — an English teacher at Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth — were protected by the First Amendment, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. Clark, whose Twitter account has since been deleted, is now entitled to return to the classroom with back pay and employment benefits or district officials...

State Rep. Poncho Nevárez, D-Eagle Pass, has bonded out of jail after he was caught on surveillance footage in early September dropping a white envelope with cocaine inside. The arrest warrant signed by a Travis County magistrate was issued Thursday. It states Nevárez faces a charge of Possession of Substance in Penalty Group 1, which is a third-degree felony and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Bond amount was set at $10,000. Nevárez confirmed over text he turned himself in Thursday night in Maverick County. According to an affidavit for a search warrant to collect Nevárez’s DNA, filed...

Ashley Auzenne was a mother of three and an advocate for more laws to limit access to firearms. She was at the end of a divorce, had suffered from depression, and appears to have killed her three children, Parrish, 11, Eleanor, 9, and Lincoln, 7.  From foxnews.com: On Thursday, the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office ruled that the deaths appeared to be because of a murder/suicide with the “mother as the suspect.” Many have written about the subject, noting the seeming hypocrisy.Many have written about the irony. It is very sad that Ashley could not control her demons a little...

I received word from 2ndDivisionVet wife that he passed away. I am not using his real name here out of respect but, will ping his handle and his wife can if she would like. I didn't ask what he died from but, knowing him for better than 10 years, I knew of medical conditions and a few terrible Operations he had. He was a wonderful human being who cared deeply for his fellow Americans and the ideals that make this country so great that people the world over want to come here and be free, live in liberty and be...

Early Monday on the same morning that TxDOT crews planned to start cleaning up underpasses across Austin, many of those experiencing homelessness were awake and gathering their belongings. “We’ve been up all night,” Andrea Aguilar said. Aguilar posted a sign to a concrete column that read, “Mr. Abbott!!! Protect the Homeless” and another reading, “We are worth a safe solution.” Nearby, other homeless people had started an illegal bonfire underneath one of the underpasses. Temperatures overnight dipped down to 54 degrees. A burn ban remains in place in Travis County, but the fire would have been illegal regardless.

There is little that Jeffrey Younger and Anne Georgulas agree on about one of their twins. To start: Is the 7-year-old transgender? It’s a question that has divided the Coppell, Tex., parents — on how Luna, who was named James at birth, should be dressed to school and wear their hair. On whether the child should receive gender-affirming care, which could eventually lead to medical treatment to delay puberty. On which parent should get to live with the twins, and who should have a say in decisions over their health.