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Associated Press
WACO, Texas— Waco police say two women and a baby have survived falling about 30 feet from an Interstate 35 overpass after being hit by a vehicle during rainy weather.
Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton says the infant suffered minor injuries in the fall after a traffic accident Monday. Police believe the mother holding her baby shielded the child from the impact. Both women were seriously hurt.
Swanton says wet roads contributed to an accident involving two vehicles and both women. They got out and stood on the overpass. One held a baby.
Swanton says a second traffic accident happened, pushing a pickup truck into the trio and knocking them off the bridge.
One woman landed on I-35. The other hit a sidewalk. Swanton had no immediate details on who held the baby.
Associated Press
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas— Heavy rain in Corpus Christi has delayed efforts to lift a boil water advisory issued last week due to low chlorine disinfectant levels in supplies.
City officials on Tuesday extended the boil water advisory as testing continues on water supplies.
The Corpus Christi area has received more than a foot of rain since Sunday in storms that led to street flooding and high-water rescues.
A city statement says the rain complicated water sampling and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality required the boil water advisory to stay in effect.
Corpus Christi officials say no E.coli has been detected in the city's water supply.
Associated Press
The Texas pastor who sued Whole Foods in April for allegedly writing a gay slur on a cake he bought withdrew his lawsuit on Monday and apologized to the supermarket chain for perpetrating a hoax.
Pastor Jordan Brown said in April that he requested a cake from Whole Foods with the phrase “Love Wins” written on it, but when he received his cake there was a homophobic remark added. Brown made the accusation in an Internet video and launched a lawsuit shortly thereafter.
But alert viewers quickly pointed out that the icing style used to write “Love Wins” and the gay slur appeared to differ, and Whole Foods released surveillance video showing the cake being purchased with the UPC code in a different location than Brown's video, suggesting the cake had been opened and tampered with.
"Our bakery team member wrote “Love Wins” at the top of the cake, which was visible to Mr. Brown through the clear portion of the packaging," Whole Foods said in an April statement. "That’s exactly how the cake was packaged and sold at the store."
The bakery member implicity accused by Brown of writing the slur was a "part of the LGBTQ community," according to Whole Foods.
“I want to apologize to Whole Foods and its team members for questioning the company’s commitment to its values, and especially the baker associate who I understand was put in a terrible position because of my actions,” Brown said in the statement.
“I apologize to the LGBT community for diverting attention from real issues. I also want to apologize to my partner, my family, my church family, and my attorney.”
Whole Foods filed a countersuit against Brown and hasn’t said if it would drop that action now that Brown has dropped his lawsuit.
Associated Press
DALLAS— Officials investigating a charter bus crash that killed eight people and injured 44 on a rain-slicked South Texas highway said Monday that the vehicle had seat belts only in the first row.
Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Johnny Hernandez said the remaining rows of seats had no lap belts. He said the bus was a 1998 model.
The OGA Charters bus crashed Saturday north of Laredo in rainy conditions. It was en route to a casino in Eagle Pass, about 125 miles northwest of Laredo. No other vehicles were involved.
The 29-year-old bus driver, Porfirio Aguirre Vasquez of Pharr, Texas, was injured in the crash, but later released from a hospital, Hernandez said. Investigators hope to interview the driver and other survivors of the crash this week, said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway.
He said NTSB, among other things, is trying to determine how the bus company and its vehicles operate. NTSB investigators plan to analyze an electronic device aboard the bus that crashed to determine if it contains data that can provide details on what happened.
Investigators don't know what they'll find, but hope for data on speed and steering-wheel positioning, Holloway said.
Federal online records show OGA Charters, based in San Juan, Texas, has two buses. The company was fined about $2,000 by regulators in 2011 for violations involving periodic inspections and pre-employment drug testing of drivers, but had a "satisfactory" rating in May 2014 with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
In 2015, the company had twice been ordered by Louisiana state inspectors to take one of its buses out of service to fix brake and emergency exit problems, MCSA records show.
It was not immediately clear if that was same charter bus that crashed in Texas or what steps the company took to fix the problems. No one could be reached at the company's listed phone number.
As for seat belts, federal regulations require them in new buses, starting in November. Efforts to require seat belts in older buses failed because retrofitting was deemed too difficult and expensive, said Shaun Kildare, director of research for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington, D.C.-based group that tracks bus crashes and highway safety laws.
OGA Charters had reported no crashes in the last two years prior to Saturday, MCSA records show, but six driver and vehicle inspections since 2014 found 15 total violations, ranging from driver records and hours they were on the road, to vehicle maintenance problems.
The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, which runs the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino Hotel in Eagle Pass where the bus was headed Saturday, expressed its condolences and said it hoped the injured recovered quickly.
Robert Rodriguez, an attorney for the tribe, said the bus was not chartered by the casino. He said he was still researching what kind of business arrangements, if any, the casino may have with bus companies, but declined further comment.
Earlier this month, a Dallas County jury awarded nearly $11 million to relatives of two passengers who died following a 2013 casino tour bus crash. The judgment against the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma came after court testimony indicated the Choctaw Nation had a contract with a private bus company to transport people to the casino.
Dallas attorney Frank Branson, who represented one of the victims in that case, said a tour bus can sometimes generate tens of thousands of dollars in casino revenue. If casinos exercise any control over the situation, he said, they would have some responsibility for safety on the bus.
Among those on the bus Saturday were several employees of the school district in La Hoya, located about 130 miles south of Laredo. The district said six of their employees, including one who died, were on the bus as part of a weekend trip that was not school-sponsored.
Associated Press
CORPUS CHRISTI — Thunderstorms in South Texas that dumped up to a foot of rain have led to flood-related rescues in Corpus Christi and sewage spilled into a creek.
No injuries were reported Monday in Corpus Christi, where emergency management officials reported high-water rescues from vehicles and low-lying areas.
National Weather Service forecaster Penny Zabel says the area has received 10 to 12 inches of rain since Sunday. Zabel says it could rain in Corpus Christi all week.
Associated Press
HOUSTON — Houston police say a suspected drunken driver has been arrested for
allegedly causing a wreck that killed a girl hours after she
attended prom.
Harris County jail records show 26-year-old Edin Palacios of Houston was being held without bond Monday on murder and evading arrest charges.
Police say Palacios early Saturday was seen driving in an erratic manner and officers tried to stop him, but his pickup truck ran a red light and hit a car.
A girl in the car died at the scene. Her prom date was driving and he suffered broken bones.
Palacios was treated for minor injuries before being booked into jail Monday.
Associated Press
GALVESTON — The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended a search for a cruise ship passenger who apparently fell overboard into the Gulf of Mexico a day after leaving Galveston, Texas.
A Coast Guard statement says the search for 33-year-old Samantha Broberg was suspended Sunday evening after crews searched for more than 20 hours, covering more than 4,300 square miles.
The Carnival Liberty docked in Galveston on Monday morning.
Associated Press
DALLAS— Texas' lieutenant governor said Friday that the state is prepared to forfeit billions of federal dollars in public school funding in defiance of an Obama administration directive requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.
The new directive is expected to worsen tensions between Republican-led statehouses and the federal government over divisive social issues. It clarifies expectations for districts receiving federal school funds, which Texas' powerful Republican lieutenant governor argues the state's 5.2 million public school students can now do without.
"We will not be blackmailed by the president's 30 pieces of silver," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. "The people of Texas and the Legislature will find a way to find as much of that money as we can if we are forced to."
Patrick said Texas currently receives about $10 billion in federal education funding. He didn't say how that money would be replaced, and his remarks on Friday came only moments after more than half the state's 1,200 school districts lost a major lawsuit that claimed Texas unconstitutionally underfunds public schools.
The risk of not accommodating transgender students and losing federal school funds alarmed others. In Georgia on Thursday night, the Fannin County school superintendent said transgendered people are protected under the Civil Rights Act and surrendering $3 million in annual federal funding to avoid the issue isn't an option.
Texas' attorney general suggested that the guidelines would result in "yet another legal fight" over transgender bathroom access. Just this week, Texas joined a lawsuit in Virginia over transgender students using the bathrooms of their choice and signaled that the Fort Worth school district, which is Texas' sixth-largest, illegally adopted policies recently that give the district latitude to not tell parents information shared by their transgender children.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said "there is no room in our schools for discrimination" and was sending the directive Friday to school districts. Some told her not to bother.
"When I get that letter I'll throw it away," Rodney Cavness, the superintendent of the small Port Neches-Groves school district in southeastern Texas, told Beaumont television station KFDM.
Under the guidance, schools have been told that they must treat transgender students according to their chosen gender identity as soon as a parent or guardian notifies the district that that identity "differs from previous representations or records." There is no obligation for a student to present a specific medical diagnosis or identification documents that reflect his or her gender identity, and equal access must be given to transgender students even in instances when it makes others uncomfortable, according to the directive.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has staunchly rejected issues over gay and transgender rights that the Obama administration has cast in terms of civil rights. Patrick responded to Friday's directive at the Texas Republican Party Convention, where delegates this week are considering a new state party platform that says "homosexuality must not be accepted as an acceptable alternative lifestyle."
DALLAS (AP) -- Texas' complicated school finance system is constitutional, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday - a surprise defeat for the 600-plus school districts that endured more than four years of costly legal battles hoping judges would force the Republican-controlled Legislature to fork over more funding.
The all-Republican court reversed a lower judge's decision that had sided with schools and called state lawmakers' $5.4 billion in classroom cuts in 2011 inadequate and unfairly distributed among the wealthy and poor districts.
The 9-0 decision ends a case that was the largest of its kind in Texas history. Major legal battles over classroom funding have raged six times since 1984, but the latest ruling marks just the second time that justices have failed to find the system unconstitutional. It also means the Texas Legislature won't have to devise a new funding system.
"Our Byzantine school funding 'system' is undeniably imperfect, with immense room for improvement. But it satisfies minimum constitutional requirements," the court found in its ruling. "Accordingly, we decline to usurp legislative authority."
The court also said "there doubtless exist innovative reform measures to make Texas schools more accountable and efficient, both quantitatively and qualitatively" but it added that "our judicial responsibility is not to second-guess or micromanage Texas education policy."
The school funding mechanism is a "Robin Hood" formula where wealthy school districts share local property tax revenue with districts in poorer areas. Districts rely heavily on property taxes because Texas has no state income tax.
School districts in all parts of Texas were on the same side in the case. While those in economically challenged areas said funding was inadequate, districts in well-to-do locales argued that voters often refuse to approve local tax increases because much of the money would go elsewhere.
Texas State Teachers Association President Noel Candelaria said in a statement: "It is a sad day when the state's highest court decides that doing the least the state can do to educate our children is enough."
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the leader of the Texas Senate and former head of its powerful education committee, admitted that "Robin Hood' doesn't work well" and that lawmakers would continue making improvements to school funding.
But with the court fight over, the pressure is off.
"The school funding issue, for now, has been resolved," Patrick said at the Texas Republican Convention in Dallas. "The Supreme Court said we're right."
At issue were the massive cuts to public education and related classroom grant programs that the Legislature approved in 2011, when the state's economy was still reeling from the Great Recession. That prompted more than 600 rich and poor school districts - which educate three-quarters of the state's public school students - to sue, arguing they could no longer properly function amid Texas' public school enrollment growth of nearly 80,000 students annually.
Exacerbating the problems, the districts argued, was the Legislature's increased demand for student and teacher accountability as measured by standardized testing scores and tough curriculum standards.
One of the groups suing was the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which pointed to the growing number of Texas students who need extra instruction to learn English.
"It is incredibly disappointing that a system so deeply flawed could be interpreted as passing constitutional muster," said Democratic State Rep. Ana Hernandez, legal counsel to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. "The 'imperfections' cited by the Court in its decision are no small wrinkle. They have profound consequences for urban and rural school districts serving low-income communities."
Democratic Texas District Judge John Dietz's first ruling in 2013 found the state's system didn't meet the Texas Constitution's requirements for a fair and efficient system providing a "general diffusion of knowledge." State lawmakers responded by restoring more than $3 billion to schools and cutting the number of standardized tests required for high school students to graduate from a nation-high 15 to five.
Dietz reopened the case to hear how that would impact schools, but didn't change his mind before issuing his written ruling in August 2014, which the state appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. Last year, the Legislature pumped about another $1.5 billion into schools, but that wasn't enough to cover the 2011 cuts when adjusted for enrollment growth and inflation.
When lawmakers reconvene in January, there will be no court-mandated funding limits.
DALLAS (AP) -- Texas' lieutenant governor says the state is prepared to forfeit billions of dollars in federal funding for public schools following an Obama administration directive over bathroom access for transgender students.
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Friday that Texas "will not yield to blackmail" and urged superintendents to defy the new federal guidance. The directive says public schools are obligated to treat transgender students in a way matching their gender identity.
The guidance doesn't impose new legal requirements, but rather clarifies expectations for districts receiving federal funds.
Patrick says Texas receives roughly $10 billion in federal education dollars. He didn't say how that money might be replaced. Patrick's remarks came only moments after more than half the state's 1,200 school districts lost a major lawsuit claiming that Texas unconstitutionally underfunds public schools.
