Judge: Apologize or Go to Jail

Former Dallas City council member James Fantroy got a 30-day prison sentence today for embezzling money from Paul Quinn College.

Interestingly, the judge told him if he would have admit his guilt and apologize, his jail sentence will be suspended. Fantroy would still have to spent 180 days confined in his home.

The case stems from the FBI’s public corruption investigation at Dallas City Hall, but the charges against Fantroy ended up having nothing to do with his work at City Hall.

Fantroy is a sick man, and his failing health no doubt played a role in the judge’s sentence.

I’m just wondering what the reaction is from the public. Certainly seems like a light sentence. What about the judge’s comments that he would waive the jail time?

The argument could certainly be made that a crime is a crime, and whether a criminal has remorse or not shouldn’t play a major role in his sentence.

Word from Fantroy’s attorney is he plans to apologize. But with the judge forcing him into it, how will we ever know if he’s sincere, or just trying to avoid going to jail?

What do you think?  For background, I’ve posted the entire news release from the U.S. Attorney’s office below.

Frantic Mother Waits Hour for Ambulance

What took Fort Worth’s ambulance service, Medstar, an hour to arrive after a panicked mother whose baby had stopped breathing called 911?

My TV story tonight already ran long, and I didn’t have time to squeeze in some of the details I would have liked… So for all you out there that want some more information, here you go.

A MOTHER’S CALL FOR HELP

Nancy Milliken’s 13-month-old girl Aidyn had briefly stopped breathing and was having a seizure.

“She was just shaking, and she wasn’t breathing, and she was turning blue.”

But because the baby started breathing again and seemed to be stable, Medstar gave the call a low priority — Priority 3.

Frantic when an ambulance never came, the mother called 911 back three times!

“Do you know when somebody is going to be here?”

DELAYED RESPONSE

The first two ambulances that were dispatched got diverted to higher-priority calls.  There was a rash of emergencies at the same time, said Jack Eades, Medstar’s executive director.

Eades apologized for the delay and said he offered no excuses.

A third ambulance, dispatched later from JPS Hospital to the family’s home in far west Fort Worth, got stuck in traffic on I-30.  It finally arrived an incredible 59 minutes after the mother’s first 911 call for help. 

Nearly a full hour!

PRIORITIZING CALLS

Obviously any ambulance service has to prioritize calls.  The really sick or injured people need help before those who can wait.  Triage 101.

Medstar says a preliminary review indicates the dispatcher gave the call the correct priority.

But nobody can argue that an hour is a reasonable amount of time to wait for an ambulance in any emergency.  The “goal” for Priority 3 calls is to arrive in 15 minutes or less.

DELAY IN CALLING FIRE DEPARTMENT

The other part of this story is why Medstar waited 44 minutes to ask the fire department for help. Ironically, there’s a station just a few blocks away. Once dispatched, firefighters were able to arrive within minutes to help before paramedics finally got there.

The truth is firefighters are usually dispatched on Priority 1 and 2 calls, not on Priority 3.  So dispatchers followed protocal.

But why not send firefighters in such an extreme case? Sure would have made a lot of sense, and director Eades all but admitted so.

PARAMEDIC SHORTAGE

Medstar has battled response time problems on and off for years. The basic problem is a shortage of paramedics. Medstar has 20 empty positions right now.  It is stepping up recruitment efforts, offering to pay for recruits to go through 8 months of training. But many young paramedics choose to work for cities that run their own ambulance service, where they can make more money and better benefits.

HAPPY ENDING

As it turns out, this story has a happy ending. The baby is fine. Doctors say she did have a seizure from a high fever caused by a virus. But no lasting damage.

Let’s hope if there’s another delay this long, that story won’t have a more tragic ending.

UPDATE: New Info on NorthPark Shooting

I just spoke with a friend of Mary Boyd, the woman who was shot in the face at NorthPark Center on Friday night.

The friend, Christina Adcock, is acting as the family’s spokeswoman.  She says Boyd is doing better today and “grateful to be alive.”

She also offered new details of the shooting.

Boyd was in her Ford pickup waiting to pick up her daughter from the movie theater when a gunman approached her passenger door and said, “Open the door, I have a gun!”

The truck was already running, so a panicked Boyd put it in drive and sped off. The gunman followed, firing two shots before he fled.

Boyd was hit by one of the bullets. It went through one side of her cheekbone, went through her sinuses, ricocheted off her other cheekbone and came out her ear, barely missing her brain.

Boyd never lost consciousness and tried to call 911 but couldn’t see the number on her cell phone. So she drove to the nearby valet stand at Nordstrom, and they helped her.

The attack was totally random, Adcock said, adding the family would like to thank the doctors and staff at Baylor Medical Center for all they have done for her.

NorthPark Mall Statement

In my last post, I mentioned that a NorthPark spokeswoman had not returned my phone calls from Friday night after the shooting.

Over the weekend, the mall issued the following statement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NORTHPARK MANAGEMENT COMPANY

OFFERS A $25,000 REWARD

DALLAS, Texas – On Friday night an incident resulting in a personal injury occurred in NorthPark’s far north parking lot, 50 feet off Park Lane. It appears to have been a spontaneous and random act.

The Dallas Police Department is responding to all questions with regard to the matter, and NorthPark is cooperating fully with the police in their investigation. The management of NorthPark Center takes the safety and well being of each of our patrons very seriously, and has always undertaken to provide the highest level of security. We will continue to do so. Lawless acts of any kind will not be tolerated at NorthPark Center, and anyone engaged in criminal activity at NorthPark Center will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

NorthPark Management Company is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the suspect. The DPD report number is 145046-V. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 214.760.8477. This reward will remain in effect for one (1) year.

Our heartfelt wishes are with the victim and her family.

For Information Contact:

Christine Szalay

NorthPark Center

 

 

NorthPark Mall Bans Reporters from Shooting Scene

It’s the kind of story that gets peoples’ attention, and understandably so.

For new details, click here.

For mall statement, click here.

A woman waiting for her daughter outside the movie theater at NorthPark Center was shot in the face Friday night. Police have made no arrests and don’t seem to know a motive.

I was one of the reporters sent to the scene to try to gather information about what happened for NBC 5.

When we arrived, we saw lots of police cars outside the mall. We parked and started to get out our camera.

Two mall security guards and a mall manager quickly swarmed around us.

“Off the property,” the manager said. “You need to get off the property.”

Pit Bulls Attack; Should They be Outlawed?

Tonight I covered a very sad story about two pit bulls that viciously attacked a little 3-year-old Fort Worth girl.

Details of the attack were too gruesome to put on TV. But let’s just say it will be a miracle if she survives.

This isn’t the first story like this I’ve covered, and I’m just wondering if pit bulls should ever be around young children.

I’m all for protecting people’s rights to have pets, but I just think pitbulls are vicious by nature.

How many children have to be mauled or killed before people decide pit bulls don’t make good pets.

Just my opinion. What do you think?

The War on the Texas-Mexico Border

Just across the Texas border in Mexico, the drug war appears to be spiralling out of control.

Cities like Ciudad Juarez, just across from El Paso, are virtual war zones.

This weekend, the Juarez police director was assassinated, and seven men were murdered in a nearby town in suspected drug-related violence. And that’s despite the presence of thousands of Mexican Army troops.

So far in Juarez this year (and it’s only May), 300 people have lost their lives.

I have gone to the border several times over the years to report on the drug violence there.  I was there in 1997, soon after the death of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes. That was the last time things were this bad.

I reported on Carrillo Fuentes, whose nickname was “Lord of the Skies” because he controlled a fleet of planes to smuggle drugs.  His death kicked off a turf war.  His brother Vicente won, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

This most recent violence is attributed to a battle between Vicente and rivals from the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

The next few weeks could be key. Thousands more Mexican soldiers are expected to arrive in and around Juarez. And that could help calm the bloodshed, at least for awhile.

The very real fear, of course, is that Mexico will lose the little control it now has, and the violence will spill across the border into Texas.

Remember, Juarez is just one city along a very long border. Other cities, like Nuevo Laredo across from Laredo, Texas, have also seen widespread violence.

For now, it appears the government of President Felipe Calderon is serious about continuing its drug crackdown.  Just days ago, Calderon attended the funeral of a top federal law enforcement official for Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI, who was gunned down in Mexico City, presumably at the hands of the drug lords.

Optimistic government officials says it’s a sign of desperation from a cartel that is on the run.

But in the past, the drug barons have proven they are better armed than the government and have, in effect, controlled large sections of the border where local cops and politicians are on their payroll.

So many billions of dollars are at stake, I can’t help but think where there’s a demand (in the U.S.), someone will step up to supply it.  The drug war, it seems, is nowhere near over.

Woman With Leukemia Has New Life

What a year for Lauren McCrary of the Fort Worth suburb of River Oaks.  From near death, she is back home with a different blood type, a new DNA, and nothing short of a new life.

Some of you may remember her, the teacher’s assistant with leukemia we first featured in a story several months ago. Yes, she’ll tell you she’s also a huge TCU fan.

She was in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant to save her life. Siblings usually provide the best match, but she was adopted at birth, grew up with her loving adoptive family in Granbury,  and had never met her biological family.

Through her ordeal, she was able to meet her birth family when the adoption agency finally got past its privacy concerns and helped hook them up.

Her story took so many twists and turns.  Turned out her family was NOT a match, but doctors did find one from a man in a national bone marrow registry.

Lauren got her transplant, thanks to the kindness of a stranger she has never met. (She has to wait one year before the registry will introduce her to the donor, if he agrees.)

After the bone marrow transplant, her blood type changed, and so did her DNA! (I never confirmed this with her or her doctors, but I suppose she has the same DNA has her donor.)

She’s back home now and doing great and plans to return to her teaching job at Castlebury High School next school year.

Because of the transplant, her leukemia is gone.  She still has to watch for signs of rejection of the donated marrow but she’s made it over the biggest hurdles and with her great attitude, I know she will do well.

Mayor Accused of Fibbing Gets the Boot

Well, the votes are in and Becky Miller is out as mayor of Carrollton.  It looks like the news stories that portrayed her as a liar played a key role in her defeat.  She had boasted a comfortable lead in early voting, before the reports surfaced.

Her campaign took a definite dive (some might call it an “implosion”) last week when reporters delved into her personal history and all but accused her of lying about attending college, a brother who she claimed died in Vietnam, singing backup to Linda Ronstadt and once dating Don Henley of the Eagles. (See my previous post.)

Just a few days before the election, after the first reports about her questionable past appeared in the Dallas Morning News, I tried to interview her following a debate, and she almost literally ran away from me and the cameras. She didn’t want to answer any questions, or to go beyond a short written statement that she had prepared.

Not the best PR move for a mayoral candidate with such an explosive story breaking right before an election, and it looks like Carrollton voters agree.

Stupid Criminal of the Week

At 5 feet 7 inches and 150 pounds, Mario Gonzales isn’t a big guy.  But he wasn’t small enough to fit down the chimney of a Dallas house he was trying to break into, police say.

Neighbors first heard his cries for help about 5 a.m. But they didn’t realize what they were hearing for several hours.

Rosie Canales, who lives next door with her children, heard the man screaming, “Help me! Help me!”

She asked where he was.  “Up here,” he replied.

She called 911.  Firefighters quickly arrived.

Brick by brick, they dismantled the chimney and were able to lift him out with a rope.

He went to the hospital to get checked out, then to jail.

And here’s the clincher. The house was for sale. It was empty! There was nothing in there to steal!

Definitely my nominee for stupid criminal of the week.