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RIO GRANDE VALLEY (AP) – When a group of state health officials and members of Texas’ maternal mortality committee gathered to review applications for new members, they easily agreed on who should fill five positions reserved for medical professionals.

But the two spots for community members were more difficult to fill, records show.

For the rural community member position, the committee did not choose a candidate, instead advancing the top two choices. The candidate who scored highest on the application rubric was an obstetrics nurse and nursing professor from the Rio Grande Valley; the next highest was Dr. Ingrid Skop, a prominent anti-abortion OB-GYN in San Antonio.

Department of State Health Services deputy commissioner Kirk Cole broke the stalemate, writing in a memo that “although the applicant did not have the highest score, I recommend selecting Dr. Ingrid Skop.”

Cole wrote that Skop’s application “indicates previous practice in rural areas” and noted her involvement in community organizations that serve rural interests. Her resume, however, shows a career spent entirely in San Antonio, and volunteer work primarily at anti-abortion organizations based in cities.

For the other community member position, reserved for someone from one of the state’s urban centers, the application review committee recommended Queen Esther Egbe, a Black woman who had personally experienced maternal health complications. Egbe runs a nonprofit that helps Black women advocate for themselves during childbirth, and serves on the Tarrant County infant mortality review committee.

Cole nixed that recommendation, however, instead advancing Dr. Meenakshi Awasthi, a Houston pediatric emergency fellow who scored higher on the application rubric.

The two spots reserved for community members are now both filled by doctors, and more than 90% of the members have a doctoral degree. Committee chair Dr. Carla Ortique said at the June meeting this was “cause for concern.”

“It is rarely possible for those who sit in positions of privilege to truly be the voice of at-risk communities,” she said. “We can and should at all times be voices that support and attempt to foster positive change. We can be trusted allies. However, we cannot truly be their voice.”

State Rep. Shawn Thierry, an outgoing Houston Democrat who authored the legislation that increased the number of community members from one to two, said it was never the intention to have those spots filled by more doctors.

“The goal was quite simple, just to add an additional voice so that the existing community member would not be the sole voice for the community on the panel,” Thierry said. “Two voices was better than one.”

Now, there are none.

DALLAS (AP) — A Serbian competitor in the CrossFit Games died while competing in a swimming event Thursday morning at a Texas lake, officials said.

CrossFit CEO Don Faul said during a news conference that they were “deeply saddened” and were working with authorities on the investigation into the death of one of their athletes at Marine Creek Lake in Fort Worth.

The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office identified the athlete as 28-year-old Lazar Dukic of Serbia. The medical examiner’s office had not yet listed his cause of death.

An official with the Fort Worth Fire Department said they were called out around 8 a.m. to assist police because there was “a participant in the water that was down and hadn’t been seen in some point in time.”

Officers who were working the event were told a participant was unaccounted for after last being seen in the water and then not resurfacing, police said.

The Fort Worth fire official said they responded for search and rescue and were not on the scene when the initial call was made.

Faul said CrossFit had a safety plan and did have safety personnel on site at the event. CrossFit did not respond Thursday to an inquiry from The Associated Press seeking more details on that safety plan.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the event on Thursday included a 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) run followed by an 800-meter (0.5-mile) swim. The newspaper said an estimated 10,000 people were in the area for the games, which began Thursday and were set to run through Sunday.

Kaitlin Pritchard told the newspaper that she was standing by the finish line when she saw Dukic approach. She said he was among swimmers she noticed had changed up their swimming patterns, which she thought could have been because they were tired from the run.

Pritchard saw people she assumed were lifeguards on paddleboards on the lake but didn’t notice any of them jumped in to try to rescue anyone, she said.

“Gauging where the people on the paddleboards were and everything, it’s just that he should have been reachable,” Pritchard told the newspaper.

Dukic played water polo and was an athlete ambassador for FITAID, a sports drink brand, said Gijs Spaans, general manager for FITAID in Europe. Spaans, who knew Dukic for three years, described him as a driven athlete and a “guy who walks into a room and lights up the room.”

“He had an incredible work ethic with his athletics career but, you know, always also made time to speak to people and make time for them,” Spaans said. “Just a really, really good dude.”

Spaans was watching a livestream of the swim miles away at the main event site. He was looking for Dukic among the swimmers coming out of the water before realizing he was missing.

“I thought he had this. And then all of a sudden I was thinking, ‘Why is his name not showing up in the finishes?’” Spaans said. “All the race, he was in top five of the race. And all of a sudden I see all these other people coming in. I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’”

“He was in it to win it,” Spaans added. “He was a great swimmer.”

The mission of the CrossFit Games, first held in 2007, is to “find the fittest athletes in the world,” the CrossFit website said. It says the games change every year and often the details are not announced until just before the event.

The CrossFit community is like a family, Faul said.

“We’re doing everything in our power during this tragic time to support the family, to support our community,” Faul said.

Dukic’s biography on the CrossFit website says he was the third-ranked CrossFit athlete in Serbia and the 88th-ranked worldwide. Dukic finished ninth in his debut in the games in 2021, then eighth the next season and ninth in 2023.

AUSTIN (AP) — The former police chief of the Uvalde school district said he thinks he’s been “scapegoated” as the one to blame for the botched law enforcement response to the Robb Elementary School shooting, when hundreds of officers waited more than an hour to confront the gunman even as children were lying dead and wounded inside adjoining classrooms.

Pete Arredondo and another former district police officer are the only two people to have been charged over their actions that day, even though nearly 400 local, state and federal officers responded to the scene and waited as children called 911 and parents begged the officers to go in.

“I’ve been scapegoated from the very beginning,” Arredondo told CNN during an interview that aired Wednesday. The sit-down marked his first public statements in two years about the May 24, 2022, attack that killed 19 students and two teachers, making it one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Within days after shooting, Col. Steve McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, identified Arredondo as the “incident commander” of a law enforcement response that included nearly 100 state troopers and officers from the Border Patrol. Even with the massive law enforcement presence, officers waited more than 70 minutes to breach the classroom door and kill the shooter.

Scathing state and federal investigative reports about the police response catalogued “cascading failures” in training, communication, leadership and technology problems.

A grand jury indicted Arredondo and former Uvalde schools police Officer Adrian Gonzales last month on multiple charges of child endangerment and abandonment. They pleaded not guilty.

The indictment against Arredondo contends that he didn’t follow his active shooter training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response while the gunman was “hunting” victims.

Arredondo told CNN that the narrative that he is responsible for the police response that day and ignored his training is based on “lies and deception.”

“If you look at the bodycam footage, there was no hesitation — there was no hesitation in myself and the first handful of officers that went in there and went straight into the hot zone, as you may call it, and took fire,” Arredondo said, noting that footage also shows he wasn’t wearing a protective vest as officers inside the school pondered what to do.

Despite being cast as the incident commander, Arredondo said state police should have set up a command post outside and taken control.

“The guidebook tells you the incident commander does not stand in the hallway and get shot at,” Arredondo. “The incident commander is someone who is not in the hot zone.”

The Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state police and other statewide law enforcement agencies, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell declined to discuss Arredondo’s interview.

Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn Cazares was one of the students killed, criticized Arredondo’s comments.

“I don’t understand his feeling that there was no wrongdoing. He heard the shots. There’s no excuse for not going in,” Cazares told The Associated Press on Thursday. “There were children. Shots were fired. Kids were calling, and he didn’t do anything.”

Arredondo refused to watch video clips of the police response.

“I’ve kept myself from that. It’s difficult for me to see that. These are my children, too,” he told CNN. He also said it wasn’t until several days after the attack that he heard there were children who were still alive in the classroom and calling 911 for help while officers waited outside.

When asked if he thought he made mistakes that day, Arredondo said, “It’s a hindsight statement. You can think all day and second guess yourself. … I know we did the best we could with what he had.”

FORT WORTH (AP) — A competitor in the CrossFit Games has died while competing in a swimming event Thursday morning on a Texas lake.

CrossFit CEO Don Faul said during a news conference that they were “deeply saddened” by the death of one of their athletes, and they were working with authorities on the investigation into the death.

An official with the Fort Worth Fire Department said they got called out around 8 a.m. to assist police because there “was a participant in the water that was down and hadn’t been seen in some point in time.”

He said they responded for search and rescue and were not on the scene when the initial call was made. He said the athlete’s body was found about an hour later.

Faul said CrossFit did have safety personnel on site at the event.

Faul said the CrossFit community is like a family. “We’re doing everything in our power during this tragic time to support the family, to support our community,” Faul said.

A police spokesperson said that they would not currently be releasing the athlete’s name.

The mission of the CrossFit Games, first held in 2007, is to “find the fittest athletes in the world,” the CrossFit website said. It says the games change every year and often the details are not announced until just before the event.

HOUSTON (AP) – About 10 miles from Johnson Space Center, a Houston-area church takes a moment during Wednesday Bible studies and Sunday evening services to pray for two members who cannot be there. In fact, there’s no way on Earth for NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Tracy Dyson to show up at Providence Baptist Church. They’re in space, orbiting the planet. More specifically, these two members are working on the International Space Station together. Like many astronauts before them, they brought along their faith when they launched into space. “God uses all of us in pretty neat ways, and I think I get the most joy from what I do thinking about it in those terms,” said Dyson, discussing her job on the “Bible Project” podcast ahead of her March launch on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Dyson’s six-month mission isn’t scheduled to end until September, but Wilmore and his fellow NASA test pilot, Suni Williams, should have been back weeks ago. They are staying longer than expected following thruster failures and helium leaks on Boeing’s inaugural crew flight for its Starliner capsule. Wilmore and Williams have said they are confident the capsule will return them home safely; engineers are still poring over Starliner test data. There’s no return date yet, which means the congregation’s worries have subsided for now since they are safe aboard the space station, said Tommy Dahn. He is a pastor for the Pasadena, Texas, church where Dyson worships as a newer member and Wilmore is a longtime elder. It’s the launch and return days that ratchet up their anxieties — and prayers. “We will definitely be on vigil as we find out when that’s going to happen,” said Dahn, who is in close contact with Wilmore and his wife during the latest mission. Wilmore paused before boarding the Starliner on each launch attempt, huddling in prayer with technicians and Williams. He acknowledged the risks of spaceflight — especially on a test flight like his.

BEAUMONT – A Timpson man has been sentenced to federal prison for drug trafficking and firearms violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Damien M. Diggs.

Austin Yarbrough, 31, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 188 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Marcia A. Crone on August 7, 2024.

According to information presented in court, from 2021 through 2023, law enforcement conducted an investigation into a drug trafficking organization operating throughout East Texas. Yarbrough was identified as a member of that organization and a distributor of methamphetamine, as well as a firearms trafficker. As a member of the organization, Yarbrough would receive methamphetamine transported by his co-conspirators and then distribute the methamphetamine in the Timpson area. On multiple occasions, law enforcement conducted operations leading to the purchase of methamphetamine and firearms from Yarbrough, including a modified .45 caliber rifle with a shortened barrel and an adjustable stock.

Further investigation revealed Yarbrough has previous felony convictions, including possession of a controlled substance, burglary of a building, and bail jumping. As a convicted felon, Yarbrough is prohibited by federal law from owning or possessing firearms or ammunition.

This case was prosecuted as part of the joint federal, state, and local Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Program, the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts. PSN is an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime. Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders work together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in the community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. As part of this strategy, PSN focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs for lasting reductions in crime.

This case was investigated by the Texas Department of Public Safety; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; Angelina County Sheriff’s Office; Drug Enforcement Administration; and FBI. This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald S. Carter.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association at a meeting Tuesday voted to seek a rate increase of 10% for 2025 residential and commercial policies, which could cost some coastal property owners hundreds of dollars more each year. After several hours of occasionally heated public testimony, TWIA’s board voted 6-3 in favor of the increase. The proposal next goes to the Texas Department of Insurance, where if approved the rate hike would be expected to take effect in January. The emotionally charged meeting in Galveston illustrated the distress many coastal Texas property owners are experiencing as extreme weather events reshape the insurance landscape. Opponents of the rate increase emphasized how the change would strain their budgets.

One retiree said that with windstorm insurance, flood insurance, homeowners insurance and property insurance, he pays more than $600 a month — on a fixed income — to live in a house he owns outright. On TWIA’s average residential premium of $2,300 a year, the rate hike would add $230. “We cannot afford this,” said a woman who explained that she and her husband are retired. “I’m going to use the heavenly vernacular of hell: Oh, hell no.” TWIA, a not-for-profit insurance association, was created by the Texas Legislature in 1971 to provide wind and hail insurance in Texas’s 14 coastal counties and a corner of Harris County. As of March, there were about 250,000 TWIA policies in force in coastal Texas, a 37% increase from 2020. The association also administers the Texas Fair Plan Association, which provides property insurance to Texas homeowners who have been denied by at least two other companies. “The impact on many of our residents will cause a disaster,” said Ryan Skrobarczyk, director of intergovernmental affairs for Corpus Christi. “Many of our residents are already stretched thin, struggling to balance essential needs with the inflationary cost of living.”

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man who claimed an intellectual disability in a late attempt at a reprieve was executed Wednesday evening for the killing of a woman who was jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.

Arthur Lee Burton, 54, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. local time. He was condemned for the July 1997 killing and attempted rape of Nancy Adleman, a 48-year-old mother of three.

Burton appeared nervous as he lay strapped to the death chamber gurney and a spiritual adviser prayed briefly over him, the inmate’s right leg twitching under a white sheet that covered him from his chest to his feet.

“I want to say thank you to all the people who support me and pray for me,” Burton said when asked by the warden if he had a final statement, his voice repeatedly cracking with a sharp breath after saying several words.

“To all the people I have hurt and caused pain, I wish we didn’t have to be here at this moment, but I want you to know that I am sorry for putting y’all through this and my family. I’m not better than anyone. I hope that I find peace and y’all can too.”

He nodded to his brother, Michael, watching through a window nearby, took four gasps as the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began taking effect, then appeared to yawn before all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 24 minutes later.

Adleman had been brutally beaten and strangled with her own shoelace in a heavily wooded area off a jogging trail along a bayou, police said. According to authorities, Burton confessed to killing her, saying “she asked me why was I doing it and that I didn’t have to do it.” He recanted this confession at trial.

Hours before the scheduled execution time, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a defense request to intervene after lower courts had previously rejected Burton’s request for a stay.

Burton’s lawyers had argued that reports by two experts and the records showed Burton “exhibited low scores on tests of learning, reasoning, comprehending complex ideas, problem solving, and suggestibility, all of which are examples of significant limitations in intellectual functioning.” They had argued the evidence was a strong indication of an intellectual disability that made him “categorically exempt from the death penalty.”

Prosecutors, however, argued that Burton had not previously raised claims of an intellectual disability and that he had waited until eight days before his scheduled execution to do so.

An expert for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Burton, said in an Aug. 1 report that he had not seen any evidence Burton suffered from a significant deficit in intellectual or mental capabilities.

“I have not seen any mental health or other notations that Mr. Burton suffers from a significant deficit in intellectual or mental capabilities,” said the report by Thomas Guilmette, a psychology professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.

The Supreme Court in 2002 had barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.

Burton was convicted in 1998 but his death sentence was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000. He received another death sentence at a new punishment trial in 2002.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, Burton’s lawyers accused the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals of rejecting their claims of intellectual disability because of “hostility” toward prior Supreme Court rulings that criticized the state’s rules on determining intellectual disability.

In its filing to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office denied that the state appeals court was refusing to adhere to current criteria for determining intellectual disability.

Burton was the third inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 11th in the U.S.

On Thursday, Taberon Dave Honie is scheduled to be the first inmate executed in Utah since 2010. He was condemned for the 1998 killing of his girlfriend’s mother.

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Lozano reported from Houston.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70