This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week in DFW: A run of school violence including a fatal school shooting, in DFW area schools; a former president comes to Waco on a major Texas anniversary; ongoing fallout from the DPD evidence scandal; and cricket comes to Texas in a big way.
Monday in Arlington, two students were shot, [Archive link] one fatally, before school began. Jashawn Poirier, age 16, died in the shooting and another unnamed student was injured. The fifteen-year-old shooter is in juvenile detention in Tarrant County, charged with capital murder. No motive for the shooting has been offered so far.
Meanwhile in Dallas, there was a shooting at Thomas Jefferson High School in northwest Dallas on Tuesday. One student was shot in the arm in the parking lot a few minutes after class let out for the day. The shooter has been arrested according to the superintendent of Dallas ISD. Again, investigators haven’t ascribed a motive.
McKinney ISD also had a weapons incident on Monday, but fortunately it only involved a middle schooler using a knife one of his classmates, causing minor injuries [Archive link.] The knife-wielding student was taken into police custody and the injured student was taken to the hospital to receive medical care.
As the band director at Thomas Jefferson said to the Dallas Morning News, It’s not an ethnic thing, or a rich or poor thing, or a ZIP code thing of where you live or where you go to school. It’s happening everywhere.” Meanwhile our only governor continues to advocate against any restrictions on gun purchases or ownership, and has described legislation to raise the age for gun purchasers to 21 as unconstitutional.
In other news:
- In case you weren’t sure, TFG is really definitely running again and he’s kicking off in Texas: Trump to hold first 2024 rally in Waco this month [Archive link; Talking Points Memo coverage]. As Talking Points Memo notes, this speech will actually be held on April 19, the 30th anniversary of the FBI raid on the Branch Davidians, a cause célèbre on the far right. This is a little like Ronald Reagan’s Neshoba speech opening his 1980 general election campaign, where he talked about states’ rights a stone’s throw away from the site where the KKK had murdered three civil rights workers in 1964. The dog whistle here is not particularly subtle. Somewhat related, Netflix has just released a docuseries about Waco by a Dallas-raised filmmaker that presents new footage and audio about the siege.
- A strong second vote for this Dallas Observer story as mentioned by our host here. I agree with Charles’ analysis that this is a state-level problem, and not a new one; I was living in Austin when Austin was overruled on the question of fingerprinting rideshare drivers. Where I would go further is that the powers-that-be in state government generally see overriding local governments as a feature, not a bug. The way to solve this problem is to vote our state leaders out.
- More fallout from the DPD evidence scandal: Dallas County prosecutors want judge removed from murder case [Archive link]. Apparently she also holds prosecutors responsible for not ensuring all the evidence in this case and others like it has been presented to the court and defense attorneys. A little research shows Givens and the DA’s office have been wrangling for at least a year and while it’s hard to tell whether the bad blood in this case is merely an extension of that fight, concern about evidence handling is clearly merited.
- Not at all related: After 25 Years in Prison, Local Man Exonerated for 1997 Deep Ellum Murder.
- Dallas County cuts 101 voting locations for May elections [Archive link.] This is a little more than a quarter of the voting locations in the county. I’m not clear from the map whether I’ll be able to cast a ballot at my local library during early voting or not.
- Confederate flag groups booted from Fort Worth Stockyards parades over St. Pat’s [Archive link]. They’d already been booted from other events and this time, after they managed to get into the St Patrick’s Day parade, the ban was made more explicit. Good.
- The ‘Dallas Express’: Your Go-To Source for Right-Wing, Astroturf News. Pretty sure I have discussed this site with Charles in the past, but here’s an update on an ugly local situation in which the name of a storied Black newspaper in Dallas has been repurposed as a pink slime operation.
- Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins Looks Back on When COVID-19 Hit Dallas 3 Years Ago. Lewis Jenkins’s leadership through the early stages of the pandemic was lifesaving. I wish he’d been able to do more of what he wanted to do.
- Company failed to address ice on I-35W before 130-vehicle pileup that killed 6, NTSB says [Archive link]. This is fallout from the 2021 winter storm. The “company” is the owner of the toll road; the NTSB says they didn’t do enough preparation and their monitoring was insufficient. Look for more news about this because at least six people died and this report will be fodder for lawsuits.
- In sports news: North Texas’ Pro Cricket Team Partners With Four-Time Indian Champs. The Texas Super Kings are part-owned by the same folks as the Chennai Super Kings, plus the less-prestigious Johannesburg Super Kings. The local ownership share includes Ross Perot, Jr. They’ve retrofitted an independent baseball stadium in Grand Prairie for cricket; no word on whether they added air conditioning for the summer games. The Guardian also has a take on US cricket that’s worth reading if only for the image of one of our Texas congressional representatives at the player draft at Johnson Space Center.
- I had never really thought about this, but it’s true. How I knew I was pretty desperate for anything resembling Tex-Mex when I lived in New Jersey for a few years was how excited I got about a Chili’s opening within walking distance of our Jersey City apartment.
- This week in cute Dallas critters: Dallas Zoo welcomes baby warthog. Tikiti was born on February 17 and has been getting round the clock care because apparently she’s not as active as the keepers wanted. Best wishes to her.