WEATHERFORD, Texas – Despite icy roads, healthcare workers still have to work. And there’s a group of people who help make it happen.

The Dedicated Nurses

Mikki Sells is a nurse in Weatherford. But lately getting to work has become a job of its own.

“You know, we‘re nurses. We have to be there to help people,” she said. “Without us, you know, they wouldn’t have anybody. So it’s what we have to do.”

To get to work, she and a group of nurses have to cross a very steep hill. And on Tuesday night, the ride home didn’t go as planned.

“Last night, we didn’t make it. We got to the very top, and we got stuck on the very top, started sliding backwards. It was so scary,” she said.

The truck stopped. Everyone got out. And they did the only thing they could think to do. They called Trendsetter Customs.

The Off-Road Volunteers

Kevin Barwell was on the other end of the call. He runs an off-road shop in Weatherford. And when the weather gets bad, he doesn’t stay home.

“Everybody needs help in a bad time. And this seems like a bad time,” he said. “Every time we get a bad storm or something like this, we try to make sure first responders get where they need to be.”

For Barwell, it’s really that simple. Since Friday, he and a group of volunteers has been busy.

“Saturday, my day started at 5 a.m. I had to start delivering nurses at the 6 a.m. shift change. And then in between that, I was pulling people out. And then the 2 p.m. shift change and then the 10 p.m. shift change,” he said.

That included Sells and her group of nurses.

“I had actually just gotten home from my last delivery, just was about to get in the shower, and got a phone call,” Barwell said. “And she’s like, ‘We’re stuck on the hill. Can you please rescue us?’”

Five minutes later, the nurses were on their way.

Gratitude and Recognition

Barwell said he doesn’t need recognition. 

“I served 20 years in the military, so I know what it’s like to be in a bad situation,” he said.

But Sells has a message she hopes he hears.

“I’d love to give him a big old hug,” she said. “Thank you so much. I hope you get the recognition you deserve.”

Charles Thompson, who once briefly escaped custody after being sentenced to death, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday evening for the 1998 double murder of his former girlfriend and her friend.

Thompson had gotten into an altercation at his then-girlfriend Dennise Hayslip’s apartment in Houston with her and her friend, Darren Cain, before a police officer escorted Thompson off the property, according to court records. Early the next morning, Thompson returned to the apartment, killing Cain and shooting Hayslip in the mouth. Hayslip was life-flighted to a nearby hospital, where she died a week later.

Thompson was charged with capital murder for killing Cain and Hayslip and sentenced to death in 1999. In 2001, his death sentence was vacated by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after judges ruled the Harris County District Attorney’s Office had unconstitutionally used an undercover investigator to obtain evidence for the trial. Thompson was given a new sentencing hearing, where a jury again sentenced him to death in 2005.

While Thompson does not dispute shooting Cain, he has said the man attacked him first and he acted defensively. Thompson has also asserted that Hayslip would have survived her wounds, which partially severed her tongue, had it not been for her receiving an improper intubation while at the hospital.

Days after his resentencing, Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail by switching into the civilian clothes he had worn to resentencing hearings and posed as an employee with the state Attorney General’s Office. The escape led to a three-day manhunt that ended with Thompson being caught drunk in Louisiana.

Thompson filed a new appeal and a request for a stay of execution with the CCA on Jan. 21 that called into question the efficacy of his legal counsel during trial. It also asserted Thompson’s previous claim that the hospital’s alleged improper intubation of Hayslip ultimately killed her. Included in the new filing was an affidavit from a doctor who testified during Thompson’s trial about Hayslip’s cause of death, stating she would withdraw her trial testimony and instead assert medical complications were the cause of death.

The CCA has yet to rule on the stay request or the appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a previous federal habeas corpus appeal from Thompson in 2021.

If executed, Thompson will be the first person put to death in the United States this year, and is one of four men in Texas with currently scheduled executions. Thompson will also be the 136th person Harris County has executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The county has executed more people than any other state, and in 2025 sentenced its 300th person to death.

Texas’ use of the death penalty has dwindled for years as new death sentences and executions per year have remained in the single digits for more than a decade.

Cedric Ricks is the next person scheduled for execution in Texas on March 11. Ricks was convicted of capital murder in 2014 for stabbing his common-law wife and her 8-year-old son to death in their Fort Worth apartment.