Family attorney says Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew when she was shot dead
Protesters gathered on Sunday in Fort Worth to call for the arrest of the white police officer who shot dead a black woman in her home after arriving to conduct a welfare check.
Related: 'That's murder': Fort Worth police officer shoots woman inside her home
Continue reading...After a white police officer responding to a report of a house door standing open killed a black woman inside her own home on Saturday, an attorney for the woman’s family said the officer had not had time to perceive a threat before shooting.
“You didn’t hear the officer shout, ‘Gun, gun, gun,’” attorney Lee Merritt said after viewing video taken from a Fort Worth officer’s bodycam during the shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson, 28.
Continue reading...Joshua Brown, who testified against a white police officer who murdered her black neighbor, has been killed: reports
A witness in the murder trial of a white Dallas police officer who fatally shot her black neighbor has been killed in a shooting, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing authorities.
The newspaper reported that authorities said Joshua Brown, who lived in the same apartment complex as Amber Guyger and Botham Jean, was shot and killed Friday in Dallas. Guyger was still in her police uniform after a long shift when, according to her trial testimony, she mistook Jean’s apartment for her own one floor below and shot him after pushing open his unlocked door and thinking he was a burglar.
Continue reading...A white police officer in Texas could be heard saying ‘this is gonna look so bad’ while leading a homeless black man by a rope down the street in newly released body camera footage.
Two Galveston police officers arrested 43-year-old Donald Neely on 3 August, accusing him of criminal trespass. Images shared online of the two white officers leading Neely using a rope tied to his handcuffs sparked public outrage, leading to a Texas Rangers investigation and a Galveston county sheriff’s office review
Continue reading...A white Texas police officer can be heard twice on a body camera video saying leading a homeless black man by a rope down city streets while he and his partner are on horseback will look “bad”.
Related: Texas police apologise after officers on horseback led black man by rope
Continue reading...A jury has sentenced Amber Guyger to 10 years in prison for the murder of Botham Jean, after viewing racist text messages sent by the former Dallas police officer.
Prosecutors had symbolically asked for a minimum sentence of 28 years. Jean, who was 26 when he died, would have turned 28 last Sunday.
Continue reading...There were emotional scenes as the former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced by a Texas jury to 10 years in prison, after she was found guilty of murder for walking into a neighbour’s apartment and shooting him as he ate ice cream. After the sentence was handed down, Jean's younger brother, Brandt, offered Guyger his forgiveness. ’I forgive you, and I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you. I'm speaking for myself, not my family, but I love you just like anyone else,’ Brandt Jean told Guyger. He then asked the judge's permission to hug Guyger and the two embraced for about a minute
Continue reading...A former police officer who argued she had a right to use lethal force when she killed an innocent man after mistakenly entering his apartment has been convicted of murder.
Amber Guyger faces a lengthy prison sentence after a jury found her guilty of the murder of Botham Jean in Dallas on 6 September last year – a verdict Jean family attorneys hailed as a significant moment in the battle to hold police accountable.
Continue reading...Alligator found near a pond on the Gator Country property. A number of his smaller friends, however, are still missing
Residents of Beaumont, Texas, who saw this summer’s alligator horror movie Crawl might have suffered more sleepless nights this week, after the largest gator ever captured in the US was reported missing amid flooding caused by Tropical Storm Imelda.
Related: Trump jumps shark with retweets attacking Fox News host
Continue reading...Tropical Depression Imelda has flooded south-east Texas, a region that had only just started to recover from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Some areas have received almost 30in of rain, with Governor Gregg Abbott declaring a state of disaster for 13 counties
Continue reading...More than 1,000 people have been evacuated after tropical storm Imelda brought chaos to Texas with up to 40 inches of rainfall and flash flooding. Governor Greg Abbott declared 13 counties disaster zones as the National Weather Service warned 'life-threatening amounts of rainfall' had fallen, with more expected over Thursday
Continue reading...Presidential contender Beto O'Rourke does not shy away from saying he would require citizens to turn in their military-style weapons when asked about gun control during Thursday night's Democratic debate. 'Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,' O’Rourke said in one of the biggest lines of the night. O'Rourke added: 'We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans any more.' He said some people at a gun show accepted the weapons were not needed for hunting.
Continue reading...Supporters of Rodney Reed, scheduled for execution in November, point to racial bias and questionable evidence
“He never had a chance.” That’s what Sandra Reed said at the start of a rally in front of the Texas governor’s mansion calling for a retrial for her son, Rodney Reed.
Reed, 51, has been on death row in Texas since 1998 and is scheduled to be executed on 20 November for murder.
Continue reading...As the death toll in a mass shooting in Texas on Saturday rose to seven and details emerged of how a 17-month-old child was shot in the face, Beto O’Rourke used an appearance on live television to denounce America’s epidemic of gun violence as “fucked up”.
Related: Texas shooting: five dead and 21 injured near Midland and Odessa
Continue reading...Seven people have been killed and 21 injured after a shooting near the twin towns of Midland and Odessa in west Texas. The gunman, who opened fire after his car was stopped by police on Saturday afternoon, was killed by police after being chased to a parking lot at an entertainment complex.
Continue reading...Five people have been killed and 21 injured after a shooting near the twin towns of Midland and Odessa in west Texas.
The gunman, who opened fire after his car was stopped by police on Saturday afternoon, was killed by police after being chased to a parking lot at an entertainment complex.
Continue reading...‘It would not have happened to a white kid,’ Angela Washington said after staff used a marker pen on Juelz Trice’s banned haircut
Juelz Trice came home from school earlier this year with permanent marker ink scribbled on his scalp, but it was not a prank played by one of his fellow seventh-graders. It was a punishment enacted by some of the staff.
The boy’s parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit this week and have told the Guardian they believe the act, a hapless attempt to hide a “fade” haircut with a design that violated the school district’s dress code, was rooted in racism and left him humiliated.
Continue reading...Democratic presidential candidate says suspect who killed 22 people earlier this month was inspired by Trump’s rhetoric
The deaths of 22 people in the El Paso shooting earlier this month made clear “the real consequence and cost of Donald Trump”, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said on Sunday.
Related: 'Rigging the game': Stacey Abrams kicks off campaign to fight voter suppression
Continue reading...When Jordan Ballard read that one of the victims of the El Paso massacre had few relatives and the public was invited to her funeral, the Los Angeles resident bought a plane ticket and flew to Texas.
Related: 'No one cares till someone dies': El Paso activists long feared their city was at risk
Continue reading...Last year marked a century since another Texas massacre, part of a legacy of racist violence leading up to El Paso
“It can happen again.” That’s what Arlinda Valencia said last year, at a ceremony in Texas marking the 100th anniversary of the massacre of 15 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans by a group of white men.
Valencia’s great-grandfather was one of the 15 unarmed men and boys who were woken up in the middle of the night in Porvenir, Texas, in 1918, taken outside, and shot to death. The slaughter, which was carried out by white Texas Rangers, US soldiers, and local vigilantes, was justified by labeling the Mexican American families “bandits” and criminals.
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