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Many security lapses led to escape of Texas inmate accused of killing 5 while on the run, reports find

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Many security lapses led to escape of Texas inmate accused of killing 5 while on the run, reports find


HOUSTON — A large number of safety lapses equivalent to insufficient strip searches, poorly utilized restraints, a staffing scarcity and an surroundings the place correctional officers grew to become complacent created the situations that led to the Might escape of a Texas inmate, ensuing within the deaths of 5 individuals, in keeping with two opinions of the incident that have been launched Thursday.

After Gonzalo Lopez, 46, fled a jail bus on Might 12 throughout an escape during which he was capable of break away from his restraints and minimize by a caged space of the car. He remained free for 3 weeks.

Authorities fatally shot Lopez on June 2 however not earlier than he had killed 66-year-old Mark Collins and his 4 grandsons — Waylon Collins, 18; Carson Collins, 16; Hudson Collins, 11; and Bryson Collins, 11 — on the household’s ranch close to Centerville, positioned between Dallas and Houston.

The Texas Division of Felony Justice, or TDCJ, carried out an inner assessment of the escape and likewise employed an out of doors agency to do an unbiased assessment.

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Each studies discovered correctional officers who labored on the Hughes Unit, the place Lopez was housed, and who have been with him on the bus had violated procedures by not correctly strip looking out him and never guaranteeing that his handcuffs have been secured and free from being tampered with.

If correct searches had been accomplished, it’s probably they’d have discovered what resembled a handcuff key that Lopez at one level hid in his mouth, in addition to two 8-to-10-inch steel weapons that he used to chop by the steel grating of a safety door, permitting him to overhaul the driving force, in keeping with the studies.

“The very fact is that if considered one of these actions was adopted in compliance with present coverage, it’s probably that the escape might have been prevented,” in keeping with an unbiased assessment carried out by Miami-based CGL Corporations.

In its inner assessment, TDCJ uncovered a number of errors. Correctional officers failed to make use of on Lopez a tool often called the Physique Orifice Safety Scanner, or “BOSS chair,” which is designed to shortly detect metallic contraband inside physique cavities of inmates. Leg restraints have been improperly positioned on Lopez, leaving them unfastened. A tool that’s put between handcuffs to dam inmates like Lopez from accessing the keyhole was apparently not positioned accurately and didn’t cowl the keyhole, probably serving to his escape.

Escaped inmate Gonzalo Lopez.
Escaped inmate Gonzalo Lopez.Texas Division of Felony Justice

Moreover, two officers had falsified search logs indicating Lopez’s cell had been searched when it had not.

“Public security is the core mission of TDCJ, and as an company, we failed to fulfill that mission,” the company’s Govt Director Bryan Collier stated in a press release. “The company has labored diligently to carry ourselves accountable, establish the failures that led to the escape, and take steps to make sure it by no means occurs once more.”

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On the bus, Lopez, who had killed on behalf of Mexican drug cartels, tried to recruit a number of the different 15 prisoners on board to affix him, asking them in the event that they have been, “able to rock and roll,” in keeping with the studies by TDCJ and CGL Corporations, the surface reviewer. One inmate initially stated sure however modified his thoughts after realizing Lopez deliberate to kill the 2 officers on the bus, drive the bus to Interstate 45, hijack a automotive, homicide the occupant, and drive to San Antonio till the search scaled down, in keeping with the studies.

Each opinions discovered workers on the Hughes Unit “had grow to be complacent, and circumvented safety procedures in favor of swiftly finishing tasks in a cursory method. These breakdowns seem to have grow to be routine and a matter of normal follow slightly than remoted incidents,” in keeping with CGL’s report.

CGL stated the escape additionally might have probably been prevented if workers on the Hughes Unit “would have scanned Lopez within the BOSS chair prior to move, a process that might have added lower than a minute onto the method.”

The conclusions by the 2 opinions are just like most of the findings present in an investigation printed earlier this week by the Houston Chronicle and The Marshall Challenge. The joint investigation additionally discovered that the primary police officer who arrived after the bus crash didn’t chase or attempt to shoot Lopez as he fled and regardless of discovering indicators that Lopez was hiding out within the Centerville space, authorities didn’t warn residents that Lopez might nonetheless be within the space.

The studies by TDCJ and CGL briefly point out the deaths of the Collins household however didn’t present info on whether or not Centerville residents ought to have been warned when Lopez’s DNA was discovered inside a burglarized cabin on Might 31.

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Collins and his 4 grandsons, who have been killed June 2, died from gunshots, sharp drive accidents and stab wounds. Authorities say that after killing the household, Lopez stole an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol from their ranch, in addition to a truck that he drove about 220 miles to Atascosa County, south of San Antonio. He was killed there by police.

Attorneys for the Collins household have notified the Texas company that they plan to file a lawsuit in opposition to it over the deaths.

After its investigation, TDCJ initiated disciplinary motion in opposition to greater than 20 workers and supervisors. The company has made a number of safety adjustments because the escape, together with rising the required variety of officers to 3 on each transport bus, and starting the set up of video surveillance tools on buses.

CGL additionally made a number of suggestions, together with suggesting TDCJ reconfigure transport buses to enhance safety and develop methods to cut back its workers vacancies. Within the month earlier than Lopez’s escape, 43% of correctional officer jobs on the Hughes Unit have been vacant.



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Texas A&M AgriLife Hemphill County Beef Conference April 23-24 – AgriLife Today

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Texas A&M AgriLife Hemphill County Beef Conference April 23-24 – AgriLife Today


Themed “Better Ranching for Better Life,” the Texas A&M AgriLife Hemphill County Beef Conference is set for April 23-24 in the Jones Pavilion, 1101 N. Sixth St., Canadian.

Hereford cattle look off into the distance on burned out ranchland ... Hemphill County beef conference to address challenges ahead
The ranchland surrounding Canadian may be blackened by wildfires, but cattle raisers from across the country will still find a value in the Texas A&M AgriLife Hemphill County Beef Conference on April 23-24. (Sam Craft/Texas A&M AgriLife)

While many ranchers will still be reeling from the devastation left in the path of the Smokehouse Creek Fire, Andy Holloway, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agriculture and natural resources agent for Hemphill County, said the saying “the show must go on” may be as important as ever.

“We will be addressing everything from the future of the cattle market to what is in store with the weather and risk management, all of which will play an important role in the recovery of our ranchers here in our county and across the industry,” Holloway said.

He also assured participants that despite the severe damage in parts of Canadian, they will still be able to accommodate the expected doubling of the town’s size when participants arrive.

Registration, at $150 per person and spouse tickets at $125, is open online at www.hemphillcotxbeef.com, by calling 806-323-9114 or stopping by the AgriLife Extension office at 10965 Exhibition Center Road, Canadian. 

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New at this year’s Hemphill County beef conference

A new feature with the Texas Beef Council will include chef presentations in a new tent dedicated to beef products developed by Texas Beef Checkoff dollars, including a tasting opportunity of some of the developments to enhance value.  

Also, a record number of trade show exhibitors, more than 100, will be in attendance.

A chuckwagon lunch April 24 will feed the entire crowd ribeye steaks, mashed potatoes and green beans. A total of three beef meals are included in the registration price.

Keynote, conference speakers

The Hemphill County Ag Committee will bring in Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary and current co-host of Outnumbered on the Fox News Channel, as the keynote speaker April 23. McEnany’s topic will be “America’s Heart and Soul is Under Attack.”

Additionally, Holloway said the conference will offer 12 sessions on everything from financing, regenerative pasture management and new technology to beef cattle genetics, beef quality and what future production might look like.

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The complete agenda can be found online.

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Will Texas GOP continue its descent without Matt Rinaldi as chair?

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Will Texas GOP continue its descent without Matt Rinaldi as chair?


When we read the news that Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi would step down, we were hit with a little spark of hope. This is, after all, one of the men who presided over the transformation of the state GOP from a normal, if deeply conservative, political party into a conspiracy-embracing, corruption-supporting mess that has mutated the meaning of conservatism in Texas.

Our hope lasted about a millisecond when we remembered that this is the Republican Party of Texas. Whenever we think it can’t get worse, it usually does.

Look at the track record. Rinaldi, a flamethrower in the Texas House who lost his Dallas County seat in 2019, succeeded former Florida Congressman Allen West as state GOP chair. Once a tea party agitator, West regularly made headlines for incendiary comments that flirted with the far-right QAnon cult and the Texas secessionist movement.

(By the way, if you’re a Dallas County Republican who didn’t vote in the primary, we regret to inform you that West is your new county party chair.)

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While West tried to use the state GOP to vault himself to the governor’s mansion, Rinaldi has brandished the party as a weapon on behalf of the billionaires bankrolling the far-right movement in Texas. Instead of buoying its members, the party apparatus attacks conservative lawmakers who ran afoul of Attorney General Ken Paxton or otherwise failed to fall in lockstep with every hard-line position of West Texas oilmen Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.

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Rinaldi should go down in infamy for his ties to Texas GOP activists who met with Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes in the fall. The Texas Tribune observed Rinaldi leaving the building where the meeting took place. Rinaldi denied participating in that meeting and condemned Fuentes, but we can’t take him seriously when he dismissed as unnecessary an attempt by his party to pass a ban on associating with antisemites. The ban eventually passed in spite of Rinaldi.

Running to replace him is former Collin County GOP party chair Abraham George, a Paxton defender. The Texas Tribune reported Monday that police responded to his home last year based on a call that an armed George was going to confront a man he thought was having an affair with his wife. Also running is state GOP Vice Chair Dana Myers, who voted in favor of the ban on associating with known neo-Nazis. She’s got at least that going for her, though the party has set the bar so low you have to dig to find it.

As Paxton hints that he may take on U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in 2026, we can’t reconcile how it is that we’re talking about the same party. How can a Texas GOP that gave us a principled and competent leader like Cornyn elevate an unscrupulous and inept attorney general like Paxton to be its standard bearer?

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We think this helps explain why Republican turnout in the Texas primary was only 12.6%, as our colleague Gromer Jeffers Jr. reported. Traditional conservatives in Texas are losing heart. The party that once courted them and lifted them up has kicked them out of the house.

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com



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Texas counties lead the U.S. in population growth, Census says

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Texas counties lead the U.S. in population growth, Census says


Six out of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the U.S. from 2022 to 2023 are in Texas, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Kaufman County, just east of Dallas, led the list with a 7.6% increase that brought its population over 185,000, Census data shows. Rockwall and Liberty counties followed closely behind, each with growth bursts of 6.5% and 5.7%, respectively.

Texas counties among the fastest growing in the country

Six of the 10 U.S. counties with the largest residential growth rates between 2022 and 2023 were in Texas. Of those, three are in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area (Kaufman, Rockwall and Ellis counties) and two are outside Houston (Liberty and Chambers counties).

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Population increases across the southern U.S. were largely due to people relocating from other parts of the country, Census officials said. On average, counties in the South experienced faster growth in 2023 than in 2022.

“Domestic migration patterns are changing, and the impact on counties is especially evident,” said Lauren Bowers, chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Branch, in a Thursday statement.

Big counties see major population increases

Texas also holds eight out of the ten counties across the country that added the most residents from 2022 to 2023. Harris, Collin and, Montgomery counties led the pack.

Harris County added 53,788 residents, more than any other county in the U.S. With nearly 5 million total residents, it’s now the third most populous county in the country. Harris also saw the second-highest gains from international migration of all counties nationwide.

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Collin, Denton, and Tarrant counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area also had significant gains, bringing in tens of thousands of new people. Denton is now the seventh county in Texas to surpass 1 million residents.

Notably, Dallas County didn’t make the Census’ top ten list.

Growth in the state’s major counties boosted Texas’ overall population. The state grew more than any other in the country in 2023 by nearly half a million people, according to earlier Census estimates.

Texas’ cities are booming

Texas’ four most populous metro areas – Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin – were among the top 10 metro areas with the biggest population increases from 2022 to 2023.

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The greater Dallas area saw the highest jump. It added 152,598 residents, bringing its total population over 8 million. The greater Houston area followed closely behind, adding 139,789 over the same period. Its total population is now over 7.5 million residents.

Nearly 70% of Texas residents live in the state’s four largest metro areas, according to estimates from the Texas Demographic Center.

Texas’ metro areas seeing big population increases

The four most populated metro areas in Texas saw large population increases between 2022 and 2023, including Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, which ranked first and second in the nation, respectively.

But the Midland metro area grew more rapidly than any of them. From 2022 to 2023, Midland’s population increased by nearly 3% – making it the seventh fastest-growing metro area in the country.

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Midland is part of the Permian Basin, the highest-producing oil field in the U.S., and is home to much of Texas’ oil and gas production.

Tracee Bentley, CEO of Permian Strategic Partnership – a collaboration between Permian Basin communities and oil and gas companies – said job growth in the energy sector could be driving population increases in Midland.

“The nature of the jobs that you’re seeing in the oil and gas space are attracting some of the younger professionals who want to come here,” Bentley said.

Overall, more U.S. counties saw population gains than losses in 2023, but the South saw faster growth than much of the rest of the country, according to Census data.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans – and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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