Texas
East Texas teens share account of witnessing Florida shark attack
MOUNT PLEASANT, Texas (KLTV) – On Tuesday, a group of recent Mount Pleasant and Sulphur Springs high school graduates shared firsthand accounts of a brutal shark attack on the Gulf Coast in Walton County, Florida that happened on June 7. Many in the group jumped into action to help the terrified and injured swimmers, crediting instinct and God’s plan for their quick response.
“No one wants to witness that, but I know that we were there for a reason,” said Mount Pleasant graduate Ella Cross.
What was supposed to be a relaxing last day on their senior beach trip quickly turned into chaos as the group of beachgoers heard screams erupt from the water and saw an ominous fin splashing right in front of them.
“I look up and I see all these girls just, like, rush towards us or just, like, just rushing, and I’m like, ‘what is going on?’ and then the next thing I see is, like, the little, like, shark tail going, like, back-and-forth, back-and-forth,” said Mount Pleasant graduate Abigail Gutierrez.
Soon after, Gutierrez said she saw blood spreading in the water. Two of the girls in the group, Kate Monk, a Sulphur Springs High School graduate, and 21-year-old nursing student Carson Zachry ran into the water to offer help.
It was there they were approached by one of the victims of the attack.
“She just kind of lifted her foot up out of the water and that’s when we saw that she had been bitten on her lower leg and on her foot, and so I just think that was when we knew we had to act,” said Monk, who is also a certified clinical medical assistant.
“I just remember, like, yelling, ‘someone get me a towel!’ I just knew that we had to wrap her leg up just to kind of contain the bleeding.”
Others in the group recalled a strong urge to offer comfort through prayer.
“There was one girl who was coming out of the water – first girl I made eye contact with – and she was panicking, and it was really scary, and I just remember I wanted her to know to know I was talking to her, so I, like, reached for her face and I grabbed her face, and I was like, ‘if you will let me, I would love to pray over you, like, let’s pray,’ and she was like, ‘yes, yes,’” said Mount Pleasant graduate Ali Fair Cheek.
Amanda Hutchings, the CTE Health Science teacher at Mount Pleasant High School, taught several of the young ladies in the group.
“This generation gets such a bad rap for entitlement, and ‘they don’t care,’ and they could do whatever, but this – what they did – it definitely tells about their character more than anything,” she said, exuding pride for the quick thinking of her students.
When asked what was the biggest lesson learned from that day, Ali Fair Cheek said, “I do think tragedy leads to community. I think when something happens that makes you realize something is more important than yourself and you can help other people, I think it, like, leads to community.”
As soon as the survivors of the attack, including Lulu Gribbins, are well enough to see visitors, the group of young East Texans plan to visit Birmingham for a happy reintroduction.
Copyright 2024 KLTV. All rights reserved.
Texas
US immigration officer shoots and kills man in Texas
Man, identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, is latest to be killed by ICE officers since President Trump took power.
Published On 8 Jul 2026
A United States immigration agent fatally shot a man in Houston, Texas, while officers were attempting to stop his vehicle, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.
The man killed on Tuesday was identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, described by ICE as a Mexican national and “illegal alien” who attempted to evade arrest during a “targeted enforcement operation” by federal immigration officers.
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Ronaldo Salgado, who identified himself as Salgado Araujo’s son, told the Spanish-language television station Telemundo Houston that his father was shot while he was looking for workers to hire in the area.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo ignored commands to stop his vehicle, saying he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer”.
In past shooting incidents, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, immigration officials had said that their officers were being attacked when the two were shot, claims vigorously disputed in both incidents.
Video footage captured on Tuesday by a surveillance camera from a nearby business and reviewed by the Reuters news agency showed a person lying on the ground beside a white van and surrounded by officers, in what appeared to be the aftermath of the shooting.
Salgado Araujo was targeted in an operation because he was living in the country without legal permission, according to DHS.
Democratic US Representative Sylvia Garcia called for an independent and thorough investigation of ICE’s claims about the fatal shooting.
“All available footage, communications, and other evidence should be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation,” Garcia posted on social media.
Juan Proano, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, echoed Garcia’s calls for a transparent investigation into ICE’s actions.
“We don’t take DHS at their word at all,” Proano told The Associated Press news agency. “There should be an independent investigation, and they should release all the videos.”
There have been at least six fatal shootings by federal immigration officers since the start of President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement crackdown.
Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, was shot in the head by a federal immigration agent during a crackdown in Minneapolis. DHS also said Good was trying to hit the agent with her vehicle, which local officials and witnesses disputed, saying she was only trying to drive away.
The backlash from Good’s killing and other similar incidents led ICE to step back from some of its more controversial operations.
However, Tuesday’s deadly confrontation in Houston came amid a recent increase in the number of ICE arrests nationwide, with immigration officers picking up about 2,000 migrants a day last week, Reuters reported.
Texas
Trump takes credit for Toyota moving some truck production from Mexico to Texas: ‘That’s what tariffs do’
Toyota is planning a $3.6 billion expansion of its Texas truck assembly plant. President Donald Trump took credit for the investment.
On Monday, the automaker announced the multibillion-dollar investment to add a second vehicle assembly line at its San Antonio manufacturing campus to support production of the Tacoma pickup. Toyota said the expansion project would shift some of the midsize truck’s production from its Mexico plants to San Antonio over roughly 4 years. Toyota will still build some Tacoma models and the Corolla in Mexico.
While Toyota did not attribute the expansion to tariffs in its announcement and the company is not fully exiting production in Mexico, Trump said the fresh investment was a sign that his tariffs were working.
“It came over the wires that Toyota is moving out of Mexico into the United States, and building one of the biggest truck and car plants ever built,” Trump said on Tuesday during a visit to Ankara, Turkey. “It’s amazing. That’s what tariffs do, properly used.”
Toyota said the investment will create 2,000 jobs and add 2.5 million square feet to the site, doubling the company’s Texas footprint by 2030.
Toyota
On Monday, Ted Ogawa, president and CEO of Toyota Motor North America, said the investment reflected the company’s “confidence in the region’s workforce, innovation, and long-term growth potential.”
The move gives Trump a high-profile example of a well-recognized company creating manufacturing jobs. His administration has argued that tariffs incentivize companies — particularly automakers — to reshore manufacturing in America and reduce reliance on foreign production.
Toyota’s announcement also comes amid major uncertainty for automakers with plants in North America. The USMCA — the trilateral free trade pact between the US, Canada, and Mexico struck during Trump’s first term — is under review after the US declined to renew the treaty in its current form on July 1. The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to change the agreement so 50% of all automotive parts and manufacturing would happen in the US.
Toyota also nodded to that trade uncertainty in its release, saying it remained committed to operations in all three countries while encouraging “a quick resolution to USMCA” to keep North America globally competitive.
Texas
Supreme Court won’t block Texas from enforcing a law requiring age verification for app downloads
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to block Texas from enforcing a state law that requires apps stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for minors seeking to download apps or make in-app purchases on mobile phones.
Justice Samuel Alito, in a pair of one-sentence orders, denied petitions by plaintiffs who claim that the Texas App Store Accountability Act violates users’ constitutional rights to free speech.
Last month, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law can take effect. The panel suspended a district court’s ruling last December that the law is unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs suing to block the law include the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a defendant in both cases.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the law impermissibly seeks to limit access to content protected by the First Amendment, including news and educational material.
“Equity and the public interest support relief because protecting First Amendment rights — and parents’ rights to supervise their children as they see fit, not as the government tells them they should — is always in the public interest,” wrote attorneys for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas.
Attorneys from Paxton’s office argued that the law protects children from “dangerous modern products.”
“A child with access to an app store and a mobile device (such as a tablet or smartphone) can potentially download any number of software applications, potentially agreeing to invasions of the child’s privacy and sale of the child’s data and be exposed to any conceivable content without parental consent or even parental knowledge,” they wrote.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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