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FRISCO – The Dallas Morning News reports a megachurch in Frisco has removed a longtime pastor due to a “moral failure,” according to a Tuesday email the church sent congregants that was obtained by The Dallas Morning News. Tony Cammarota, a former associate pastor at Stonebriar Community Church, “confessed to church leadership of a moral failure” on July 7, the church’s email said. “He is deeply remorseful but his sin disqualifies him from serving on our staff as a pastor,” it added. Cammarota did not return three phone calls requesting comment on the situation. Representatives for the church did not respond to three calls and two emails requesting comment. Cammarota worked at the church as an associate pastor for over 17 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. More than 3,000 people attend Sunday services at Stonebriar, according to a recent church news release, and around 16,000 watch online.

The church’s email did not describe the nature of the “moral failure” it said led to Cammarota’s removal and urged readers not to speculate about it. “And please guard against giving the Devil any foothold for more damage to our church through unnecessary speech and speculation,” it read. “This is a sad day and we don’t want the Devil making it worse through any one of us in the days ahead.” The church’s email has received criticism on social media. A screenshot of the email obtained by the blogger Amy Smith and posted to a Frisco Reddit group has received over 100 comments so far, with a number of people taking issue with the request not to talk or speculate about the situation. “Oh, and if you want to find out if the moral failing hurt anyone, you’re only helping the devil,” user “crowej” wrote. “Ironic how anything bad that happens is the Devil and not the pastor’s fault, and the church family is supposed to just not talk about the sin because that would be spreading the Devil,” user “r3dk0w” wrote.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas was quick to ask for federal aid when Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, when Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017, and again when Hurricane Hanna touched down in 2020. But that did not happen this year as Hurricane Beryl approached Houston, triggering a round of finger-pointing between the White House and Texas officials over how quickly federal supplies including food, water and generators should have been distributed. President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday that he had to personally reach out the state’s acting governor, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, for a formal request a day after the storm hit, knocking out power to more than 2 million CenterPoint Energy customers. “I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden said in a call. That’s not how Texas leaders have handled past hurricanes.

The night before Harvey first made landfall in Texas in 2017, Abbott already had a request signed and submitted to then-President Donald Trump in anticipation of the storm making landfall near Rockport. Days later, the storm hit Houston, dropping more than 50 inches of rain on the city. In 2020, Abbott requested a major disaster declaration from Trump before Hanna made landfall in South Texas as a Category 1 hurricane. “I submit this request in anticipation of the impacts of Hurricane Hanna, currently forecast to make landfall as a hurricane along the southern coast of Texas with continuing impacts to counties along the entire Texas coast and further inland,” Abbott said in his letter to Trump. Abbott’s predecessor, Rick Perry, filed a major disaster declaration with then-President George W. Bush on Sept. 12, 2008, the day before Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston as a Category 2 storm with 110-mph winds.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A burglary suspect was killed in an exchange of gunfire with SWAT team officers following a standoff at a house in San Antonio, police said.

Juan Antonio Hernandez, 52, died Tuesday evening, San Antonio police said in a statement.

“They called him out to surrender and instead of doing that he came out shooting,” Police Chief William McManus told reporters. “He fired somewhere around four to five rounds, struck the two SWAT vehicles and two SWAT officers returned fire.”

Hernandez died in a hospital, McManus said. No one else was injured.

The police chief did not identify the officers or say how many times they fired or how many times Hernandez was struck,

Hernandez was wanted for burglary, domestic violence and evading arrest, McManus said.

The police department’s shooting team and internal affairs investigators will conduct separate investigations into the shooting and provide reports to the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Fort Campbell soldier found dead in her home earlier this year died of nearly 70 stab wounds, according to an autopsy report.

No arrests have been made in the death of 23-year-old Pfc. Katia Dueñas Aguilar, whose body was found in her Tennessee home in May near the Army post.

Clarksville Police said Wednesday that no arrests have been made.

An autopsy report from the Montgomery County Medical Examiner’s Office said Dueñas Aguilar suffered 68 stab wounds to her neck and upper body, The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle reported.

The medical examiner ruled the cause of death a homicide as a result of sharp force injuries of the neck, the newspaper reported.

Dueñas Aguilar, of Mesquite Texas, enlisted in the Army in 2018 and a year later came to Fort Campbell, on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. She was a member of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division.

Her family and The League of United Latin American Citizens have offered a reward of $55,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Clarksville Police and Army criminal investigators are working together on the investigation.

During a news conference in May in Texas, Dueñas Aguilar’s family asked for justice for her family. They said she was a mother with a 4-year-old son.

DALLAS (AP) — It could take days or longer to fully restore power to the Houston area after Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas, leaving millions of residents in the dark and without air conditioning in searing summer heat.

The slow pace of restoring power in America’s fourth-largest city has put CenterPoint Energy, Houston’s utility provider, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared before the storm and was working fast enough to get the lights back on.

Some Houston residents — who are all too familiar with enduring natural disasters — have also questioned why one of the largest cities on the Gulf Coast appeared to wilt under Beryl and was unable to better withstand a Category 1 hurricane.

Here’s what to know:
What damage did Beryl leave behind?

Beryl was no longer a Category 5 behemoth by the time it reached the U.S. before sunrise Monday. It made landfall as a weakened hurricane with sustained winds of 80 mph (128 kpm) after having already torn a deadly path of destruction through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

In the Houston area, Beryl toppled transmission lines, uprooted trees and snapped branches that crashed onto power lines. By late Wednesday afternoon — over 60 hours after landfall — about 1.3 million homes and businesses were still without power, according to CenterPoint Energy. The company also said it had restored electricity to over 1 million customers.

Typically sweltering summer heat along the Texas coast has added to the urgency of restoring power. Temperatures on Wednesday were back above 90 degrees (above 32.2 Celsius), prompting the city to open cooling centers for residents without air conditioning.
What’s being done to restore power?

CenterPoint Energy has defended its preparation for the storm and said that it had brought in about 12,000 additional workers from outside Houston since landfall to expedite power restoration.

Under sometimes sharp questioning Wednesday from Houston city councilmembers about the utility’s handling of the storm, Brad Tutunjian, vice president for regulatory policy for CenterPoint Energy, said it wouldn’t have been safe to pre-position outside crews to “ride out” the storm.

He said the extensive damage to trees and power poles has hampered the ability to restore power quickly.

“That’s where all the time comes in to do the restoration work,” he said.

Rural communities in Beryl’s path are also struggling to get power restored quickly. In coastal Matagorda County, where Beryl made landfall, officials said it may take up to two weeks to get the electricity back on for around 2,500 customers in the hard-hit community of Sargent, where homes were destroyed and badly damaged.
What other storms have hit Houston?

Beryl is just the latest natural disaster to wreak havoc on the power grid in the Houston area. In May, a powerful storm that ripped through the area with high winds left nearly 1 million people without power.

Houston was also hit hard in 2021 when Texas’ power grid failed during a deadly winter storm that brought plunging temperatures, snow and ice. Millions of Texans lost power during that storm and were left to ride it out in frigid homes, or flee.

In 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston Island as a Category 2 storm with 110-mph (177-kph) sustained winds, bringing flooding and wind damage to the Houston area. In the aftermath, Houston created a task force to investigate how the power was knocked out for more than 2 million people and took 19 days to restore.

One key recommendation was for CenterPoint Energy to install an “intelligent grid” system that would automatically reroute power to unaffected lines during an outage. A document on the utility’s website noted that 996 of the devices had been installed as of 2019, which would have covered less than half of the grid at the time. It was not immediately clear if more progress had been made, and the company did not immediately respond to requests for further comment Wednesday.
Where is Texas’ governor?

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been the face of the state’s response while Gov. Greg Abbott is on an economic development visit to Asia, where he’s traveling to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Abbott left Texas on Friday with a delegation that included other lawmakers, state officials and civic leaders. On Tuesday, Abbott posted on social media that he has remained in contact with emergency management officials and Patrick, who is the acting governor while Abbott is traveling.

“We’ll remain engaged until every Texan recovers,” he wrote.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was criticized in 2021 for traveling to Cancun while his state suffered through a deadly freeze. This week, Cruz has traveled along the coast visiting hard-hit communities alongside state officials. On Tuesday, Cruz said he was sleeping on a friend’s couch after his own home in Houston lost power.

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Associated Press/Report for America writer Nadia Lathan contributed to this report from Austin, Texas.

HOUSTON (AP) — The damage left by Hurricane Beryl in Texas and requests for federal help has opened a rift between the White House and the state’s GOP leaders following the storm that pummeled the coast and knocked out power to millions of residents this week around Houston.

President Joe Biden said he tried tracking down Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — who has been in Asia on a trade mission since last week — to get the state to formally request a major disaster declaration that unlocks federal aid. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Biden also said he tried reaching Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has served as acting governor since Beryl made landfall Monday, before they eventually connected the next day.

Both Texas leaders have sharply pushed back on Biden’s version of events in the middle of a hurricane recovery that has left some coastal residents facing the possibility of days or weeks without electricity.

“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden told the newspaper on Tuesday.

Abbott, in an interview from Japan on Wednesday with Austin television station KTBC, said Biden has reached him him multiple times on the same number following previous disasters in Texas but that the president this time never called that phone during Beryl.

“I know for an absolute 100% certainty, the only person to drop the ball is Joe Biden by making up some bizarre lie,” Abbott told the station. “And why he would do that? I have no idea.”

Patrick said he spoke with Biden on the phone on Tuesday and that the president granted Texas’ request for a disaster declaration. Patrick has said the state needed to first determine its needs before making a formal ask. Texas has previously requested federal help before hurricanes have made landfall, including before Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017.

Rafael Lemaitre, FEMA’s former national director of public affairs, told the newspaper that major disaster declarations do not need to wait for a thorough on-the-ground assessment. Governors are the lead requesters but can change their request as more information becomes available, Lemaitre said.

FEMA typically positions responders and aid before a hurricane makes landfall, said Beverly Cigler, a public policy professor at Penn State who specializes in intergovernmental relations and emergency management.

Once the disaster hits, an initial damage assessment is usually completed. If it reaches the threshold for an emergency declaration, the governor sends that assessment to the White House for review, she said.

“Everything is done well ahead of time,” Cigler said. “But a president has to wait to have a disaster request from the state to really get aid going in a big way.”

More than 1.4 million customers and business remained without power Wednesday evening in the Houston area, according to Poweroutage.us.

HOUSTON (AP) — Pressure mounted Wednesday on Houston’s power utility as millions of residents still had no electricity nearly three days after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, stoking questions over how a city that is all too familiar with destructive weather was unable to better withstand a Category 1 storm.

With frustration growing as Houston residents spent another sweltering day in search for places to cool off, fuel up and grab a bite to eat, a CenterPoint Energy executive faced a barrage from city leaders who wanted to know why it was taking so long to get the lights back on again. Mayor John Whitmire bluntly called on the utility to do a better job.

“That’s the consensus of Houstonians. That’s mine,” Whitmire said.

Late Wednesday, CenterPoint Energy said it had “restored more than 1 million of the 2.26 million customers impacted by Hurricane Beryl in the first 55 hours of its restoration efforts, and continues to focus on restoring customers without power.”

“Based on its continued progress, the company expects to have an additional 400,000 customers restored by the end of the day on Friday, July 12 and an additional 350,000 customers restored by the end of the day on Sunday, July 14,” the utility’s statement said.

Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest type, but has has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths — one in Louisiana and six in Texas. Earlier, 11 died in the Caribbean.

The storm’s lingering impact for many in Texas, however, was the wallop to the power supply that left much of the nation’s fourth-largest city sweltering days later in hot and humid conditions that the National Weather Service deemed potentially dangerous.

“Maybe they thought it wasn’t going to be so bad, but it’s had a tremendous effect. They needed to be better prepared,” construction worker Carlos Rodriguez, 39, said as he gathered apples, oranges and ready-to-eat meal packs at a food distribution center. His family, with two daughters ages 3 and 7, was struggling, he said.

“We have no power, we’re going to bed late and I’m using a fan made out of a piece of cardboard to give my kids some relief,” Rodriguez said.

Hospitals were sending patients who could not be released to homes with no power to a sports and event complex where an area was set up to hold as many as 250 people. As of late Wednesday afternoon, about 40 patients had arrived and about 70 to 75 others were on their way, Office of Emergency Management spokesman Brent Taylor said.

Power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers after the storm made landfall Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.

As of late Wednesday afternoon there were 1.6 million customers without power in the Houston area, including 1.3 million CenterPoint customers.

Brad Tutunjian, the CenterPoint vice president for regulatory policy, defended the company’s response while facing pointed questions from the City Council and said more than 1 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday.

“To me, I think that’s a monumental number right there,” Tutunjian said.

The company acknowledged that most of the 12,000 workers it brought in to help the recovery were not in the Houston area when the storm arrived. Initial forecasts had the storm blowing ashore much farther south along the Gulf Coast, near the Texas-Mexico border, before it headed toward Houston.

CenterPoint would not ask third-party workers from other companies and municipalities to pre-position and “ride out” the storm “because that is not safe,” Tutunjian said. Instead they are asked to be as close as possible to respond after the storm moves through.

One major difficulty with Beryl was restoring power knocked out by fallen trees and branches, Tutunjian said.

“When we have storms such as this, with the tree completely coming down … taking out our lines and our poles, that’s where all the time comes in to do the restoration work,” he said.

But council members pressed for answers about why CenterPoint, which has been the Houston area for about 100 years, hasn’t been more aggressive in trimming trees during calm weather or putting more of its power lines underground. The company has been putting new lines underground in residential areas for decades, Tutunjian responded.

Two council members said they received a text about a house that burned down after reporting a downed power line. The texts reported the fire department said it could not do anything, and the utility did not respond. City Council member Abbie Kamin called the extended lack of power a “life safety concern.”

It’s hardly the first time the Houston area has faced widespread power outages.

In 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston Island as a Category 2 storm, causing flooding and wind damage to the Houston area. It left about 2.2 million CenterPoint customers without power, according to the Harris County Flood Control District, which said that 75% of the power was restored within 10 days.

Houston was also hit hard in 2021 when Texas’ power grid failed during a deadly winter storm that brought plunging temperatures, snow and ice. Millions lost power and were left to ride out the storm in frigid homes or flee.

As recently as May, storms killed eight people and left nearly a million customers without power.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who is in Asia on an economic development trip, questioned why Houston has repeatedly been plagued with power problems after severe weather. In an interview with Austin television station KTBC, Abbott, who has been governor since 2014, said he would direct the Texas Public Utility Commission to investigate that, as well as the preparations for and response to Beryl.

“CenterPoint will have to answer for themselves, if they were prepared, if they were in position,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who was acting governor with Abbott away, said Tuesday. “Their company is responsible for that. The state was in position.”

Sharon Carr, 62, a lifelong Houston resident, was frustrated.

“Every little thing affects us that way. There’s too much wind, we don’t have power. It’s raining a long time, we don’t have power,” Carr said. ”And it takes three, four, five days to get it back up. Sometimes that’s too long for people that are sickly, can’t stand the heat or don’t have transportation to get to cooling centers.”

Raquel Desimone, who has lived in the area since about 2000 and experienced many storms, was surprised at having to scramble yet again for power and shelter.

“I went through Rita, Ike, Imelda and Harvey,” Desimone said. “That the infrastructure can’t handle a basic storm, leaving for a Category 1, (it) is sort of crazy to me that I’m having to do this.”

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Vertuno reported from Austin. Associated Press/Report for America writer Nadia Lathan in Austin contributed to this report.

HOUSTON (AP) — Houston’s biggest utility came under mounting pressure Wednesday over its response to Hurricane Beryl, as nearly 1.4 million area homes and businesses remained without power and residents searched for places to cool off, fuel up and find something to eat.

City Council member Abbie Kamin called the extended lack of power a “life safety concern.”

“We say ‘everything we can do’ to get the lights back on. In my opinion, respectfully, they should be on,” Kamin told a CenterPoint Energy executive during a council meeting.

“This was a Category 1 (storm),” Kamin said, referring to the weakest type of hurricane. ”We know that this severe weather, the extreme weather due to climate change, is real and we’ve known for some time.”

Power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers after the storm made landfall in Texas on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us. Brad Tutunjian, vice president for regulatory policy for CenterPoint Energy, defended the company’s response and told council members that more than 1 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday morning, although the company’s online tracker put the figure at just under a million at the time.

“To me, I think that’s a monumental number right there,” he said.

The company has acknowledged that most of the 12,000 workers it brought in to help the recovery effort were not in the Houston area when the storm arrived. Initial forecasts had the storm blowing ashore much farther south along Gulf Coast, near the Texas-Mexico border, before heading toward Houston.

The company would not ask third-party workers from other companies and municipalities to pre-position and “ride out” the storm, “because that is not safe,” he said.

“We ask you to get as close as possible, so you can respond as efficiently as practical,” he said of the instructions given to the workers.

Tutunjian noted how difficult it is to quickly restore power that was cut off by falling trees and branches.

“When we have storms such as this, with the tree completely coming down … taking out our lines and our poles, that’s where all the time comes in to do the restoration work,” he said.

Council members pressed Tutunjian about why the company, which has been the Houston area for about 100 years, hasn’t lain more of its power lines underground. He replied that it has been laying all new lines underground in residential areas for decades.

Two council members said they received a text about a house that burned down after reporting a downed power line. The texts reported the fire department said it could not do anything, and the utility company did not respond.

Beryl has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths — one in Louisiana and six in Texas — and at least 11 in the Caribbean. It weakened as it moved deeper into the U.S. and early Wednesday was a post-tropical cyclone centered over northeastern Indiana.

A flood watch was in effect for parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The storm spawned suspected tornadoes in parts of Indiana and Kentucky.

In the Houston area, Beryl compounded and repeated the misery of May, when storms killed eight people and left nearly a million customers without power.

High temperatures in Houston on Wednesday were expected to climb into the 90s (above 32.2 Celsius), with humidity making it feel even hotter.

People coped as best they could. Kyuta Allen took her family to a Houston community center to cool down and use the internet.

“During the day, you can have the doors open. But at night, you’ve got to board up and lock up — lock yourself like into a sauna,” she said.

Raquel Desimone, who sought relief in a cooling center, has lived in the Houston area since about 2000 and has been through multiple hurricanes and tropical storms. Still, was surprised and frustrated having to scrambled yet again for power and shelter from the heat.

“I went through Rita, Ike, Imelda and Harvey,” Desimone said. “That the infrastructure can’t handle a basic storm, leaving for a Category 1, (it) is sort of crazy to me that I’m having to do this.”

Nim Kidd, head of the state’s division of emergency management, stressed that restoring power was the top priority.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting as governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is overseas, said nursing homes and assisted living centers were the highest priority. Sixteen hospitals ran on generator power Tuesday morning, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

State officials planned to use a sports and event complex to temporarily hold up to 250 hospital patients who are awaiting discharge but cannot be released to homes with no power.

Patrick said Tuesday that he would wait until after the recovery effort to focus on CenterPoint’s response and whether the company was poorly prepared.

“CenterPoint will have to answer for themselves, if they were prepared, if they were positions. Their company is responsible for that. The state was in position,” he said. “I’ll tell you whether I’m satisfied or not when I have a full report of where their crews were when they were asked to come in.”