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KAUFMAN COUNTY – The truck driver who was charged with five fatalities in a 2025 crash on Interstate 20 in Kaufman County entered a guilty plea and was given a 20-year prison sentence. In court, Alexis Osmani Gonzalez-Companioni entered a plea, ending a case that garnered statewide attention after investigators claimed he fell asleep while operating an 18-wheeler and crashed into stopped traffic close to Terrell.

Following the collision on June 28, 2025, a number of cars and commercial trucks were involved in a chain reaction pileup. Gonzalez-Companioni, a Florida resident, admitted to investigators that he had dozed off prior to the collision. A truck carrying three generations of the Fort Worth McKellar family was struck first. Grandfather Billy McKellar, parents Zabar and Shawn, and their 15-year-old son Kason were all instantly killed in the collision. Continue reading Truck driver sentenced in fatal pileup

HOUSTON COUNTY – In federal court, a former Houston County deputy has elected to enter a guilty plea to charges of child pornography and sexual abuse of a child. Former Houston County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Skyler Laza has agreed to enter into a written plea agreement to the federal charge of sexual exploitation of a child, also known as production of child pornography, according to court documents filed on Tuesday. According to related documents, Skyler Laza forced the child to engage in sexual activity, recorded it, and sent the footage. Continue reading Former deputy pleads guilty to child sex crimes, child pornography

PANOLA COUNTY – Authorities confirmed that an 18-wheeler crashed in Panola County on Thursday morning, killing two people. Around 4:20 a.m., the collision occurred in Panola County at the intersection of Highway 79 and FM 31. The driver and passenger in the 18-wheeler were confirmed dead by the Texas Department of Public Safety. They are both from Missouri. According to the Panola County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Department of Transportation is present and attempting to reopen the road. An investigation is ongoing.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – A giraffe named Gracie is missing in Texas, and the search for her has become a tall order.

Gracie, who is about 3 years old, has been missing for nearly two weeks after escaping her enclosure at Cedar Hollow Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, said Vic Jones, who owns the remote property about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of San Antonio. He said Wednesday that Gracie had wandered into a part of the privately owned preserve that other giraffes previously avoided.

Jones said he has sent up helicopters to look for Gracie, a few sightings have trickled in, and a $5,000 reward is on the table.

But the giraffe, which stands roughly the height of a tree, hasn’t turned up.

“She wound up going up and feeding in an area on the hillside and the rocky ledges that none of the other giraffes had ever gone on before,” Jones said. “And when she came down off of there, she came down on the wrong side of the gate.”

The ranch is in rural Real County, where its roughly 2,700 residents were put on alert to be on the lookout for a missing giraffe. Jones said the search area is extremely remote, and the likelihood of Gracie encountering any humans is low.

“People are not in danger of her because she’s not around people,” Jones said. ‘She’s out in very, very rough, heavily wooded lands.”

The Texas Hill Country has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the country. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the mild climate and rugged terrain seems to serve as a good stand-in for most of the animals’ native African environments.

He rattled off a list of animals that have gone missing over the years, especially after floods, but said this was his first giraffe.

“I’ve had wildebeests, I’ve had water buffalo, I’ve had monkeys, I’ve had zebras, all go missing,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we recover them, and sometimes we don’t.”

While the middle of Texas is not a giraffe’s native environment, Jones said Gracie should be able to find plenty of leaves and other vegetation to eat. He said other animals were not likely to bother her.

Jones said he initially had helicopters searching an area of about 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with no luck. A few days later, there was a report that Gracie was spotted to the south.

But by the time they could search the area, Jones said, she was already gone.

“We’re always two three days late for where the information is coming from, so that makes it tough,” Jones said.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas would make Bible stories required reading for more than 5 million public school students under a proposal that has reignited debate over widening efforts in the U.S. to put more religion in classrooms.

A final vote by the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education on whether to approve the plan is set for Friday. Last year Texas became the largest state to require every classroom to display the Ten Commandments.

The proposed list has drawn fierce opposition. Critics argue that it violates the constitutional separation of church, lacks diversity and favors Christianity over other religions. Supporters say Judeo-Christian traditions were fundamental to the nation’s founding and that should be reflected in the public school curriculum.

Here’s what to know about the proposal and the broader fight over religion in public schools:
Republicans and Trump have pushed more religion into classrooms

President Donald Trump has pledged to protect and expand religious expression in public schools nationwide, and Texas — a red state that is home to about one in 10 of all U.S. public school students — often sets the agenda.

In 2023, Texas became the first state to allow the hiring of chaplains to counsel students, and the following year, the board narrowly approved an optional Bible-infused curriculum for elementary schools. Last year, Republican lawmakers required public schools to display the Ten Commandments, a measure recently upheld by a federal appeals court.

Texas has about 5.5 million public school students from kindergarten through high school. If approved by the board, the required reading list would take effect in 2030.

“We need to focus on what our nation was founded on and not apologize for that,” Susan Perez, founder of Citizens for Education Reform, told the education board during testimony this week. “It is the truth and we should not be afraid.”

List requires Bible readings from elementary to high school

Picture-book stories for elementary students including “Noah’s Ark,” “David and Goliath” and “Daniel and the Lion’s Den” are on the required reading list. By fourth grade, students would encounter passages about Jesus in the New Testament.

By middle school, students would be expected to read several passages about Jesus, including passages from his most famous sermon, and another where he instructs people to cast aside earthly anxiety and seek the kingdom of God. Another would connect a reading from the Book of Lamentations and its themes of the destruction of Jerusalem with readings about the Holocaust.

In high school, students would read the parable of the prodigal son, portions of the Book of Job, and the story of Adam and Eve.

Some education observers said Texas may be the first state to enact a required reading list, with the added layer of mandated religious text.

Antero Garcia, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and a Stanford University professor, said he doesn’t know of any other state that has such a list. Educators at the district and school level usually choose what texts their students will read, Garcia said.

Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said she believes such a mandated reading list would be “unique” to Texas.

“I think there’s lots of state lists that exist that are like advised readings, suggested readings,” she said.
Critics say the proposal favors Christianity over other religions

The required readings rely heavily on the King James Bible, one of the most popular translations, and more recent evangelical translations that critics argue lean too heavily on Christian interpretations of the texts.

Other critics question whether religious stories should be taught at all in schools attended by thousands of children of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other faiths, and others who identify as atheist or agnostic.

“I do think that it’s disturbing that there are no texts from other religious traditions that are included,” said Frank Strong, an English and journalism teacher and co-founder of the student advocacy group Texas Freedom to Read.

___

Stengle reported from Dallas.

ANGELINA COUNTY (KETK) — A Lufkin man was pronounced dead on Monday afternoon after his vehicle reportedly drove off U.S. Highway 59 and into the Neches River, officials said.

According to a preliminary report from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the crash occurred at around 1:43 p.m. near the Polk and Angelina County line. A 2022 Ford Bronco was traveling north on the highway before reportedly traveling off the road, down an embankment and into the Neches River.
Mount Pleasant ISD mourns 2 students killed in car crash

DPS identified the driver as 71-year-old Theodore Fajen III of Lufkin, who was pronounced dead on the scene by a justice of the peace.

The investigation remains ongoing and no information is available at this time, DPS said.

McALLEN (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) — As the New World screwworm continues to infiltrate livestock and other animals in Texas, many have been asking how the parasitic fly landed here to begin with.

Last week, the Texas Animal Health Commission identified a potential cause: small wildlife and rodents like armadillos, opossums and rabbits.
MAP: Where have New World screwworm cases been reported in Texas?

Until now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has pointed to multiple factors, including border policies under President Joe Biden to the illicit movement of cattle at the hands of drug cartels.

The new finding is based on conversations with entomologists, Lewis R. “Bud” Dinges, executive director of the Texas Animal Health Commission, told the Texas House Committee on Agriculture and Livestock.

However, the source of the first case of New World Screwworm remains under investigation, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Other health experts say it’s still undetermined what allowed the invasive pest to finally breach the Texas-Mexico border.

Tracing the source

During last week’s committee hearing, Dinges said epidemiological investigators have found no evidence so far linking Texas cases to the illicit movement of cattle from Mexico.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said it is still investigating to determine how screwworm spread.

“That’s very much an unknown, still, at this time. But wildlife is susceptible to New World Screwworm in the same manner that livestock and other warm-blooded animals are,” said a spokesperson for Texas Parks and Wildlife.

However, the spokesperson added that small mammals don’t travel long distances such as the distance between the last known detection in Mexico at the time to the location of the first case in Texas, which was detected in LaPryor on June 3.

Moving north

The USDA has repeatedly mentioned that models predicted that screwworm would inevitably arrive in the U.S. after the parasitic fly began moving north from South America in 2023.

The pest began trickling up through Panama after it broke through the Darien Gap, which had served as a barrier for screwworm for decades.

It then slowly moved through Costa Rica until it reached Nicaragua where it traveled quickly, said Jeremy Radachowsky, Mesoamerica and the Caribbean regional director for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

“Not only was it moving very quickly, but it was moving exactly along these paths of cattle trafficking and cattle contraband that we’ve been able to identify earlier,” Radachowsky said.

Screwworm detections followed those cattle-trafficking paths into Honduras and Guatemala. A few weeks later, Mexican officials detected their first case in November 2024.

Screwworm was predicted to have arrived in the U.S. last summer, USDA officials said, but efforts to stop it delayed it for a year.

“We’ve been actively and vocally warning that in order to stop screwworm, you have to stop this illegal and unregulated movement of cattle from south to north,” Radachowsky said. “That is definitely the driver.”

But how it crossed from Mexico into the U.S. remains unclear, he said.

The USDA closed all southern ports of entry to livestock imports from Mexico in May 2025 and have kept them closed since then, preventing cattle from legally crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.

The Wildlife Conservation Society does not have clear information on how screwworm crossed into Texas, Radachowsky said, but noted that it can infest and travel with other warm-blooded animals like pets and wildlife.

Governor Abbott launches New World Screwworm tracker website

“At the Texas-Mexico border, you’ve got feral pigs, white tailed deer, other wildlife, basically moving back and forth as well,” he said.
The unknown

There are 13 active cases of New World Screwworm in Texas as of Tuesday. An average of 15 suspected cases are reported to the Texas Animal Health Commission every day, Dinges said during the committee hearing last week.

State Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Republican from Rio Grande City who chairs the committee, asked whether it would be logical to assume there are more cases between the Texas-Mexico border and the location of the confirmed infestations that just haven’t been reported.

Dinges replied that testing for screwworm has been ongoing for over a year and cases had not been detected until now.“We’ve been submitting anywhere from two to six larvae samples a week since last May and we have not detected any New World Screwworm larvae until June 3,” Dinges said.

Despite those assurances, farmers and ranchers throughout Texas are operating under the assumption that screwworm is present in their area.

“There’s just so much country that’s unsurveilled,” said John Sewell, a rancher from Kinney and Uvalde County said during the hearing. “I’m in between two — one south of me and one north of me. Do I think I don’t have it? I would be a fool to think I didn’t have it.”

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

ANGELINA COUNTY (KETK) — A Lufkin man was pronounced dead on Monday afternoon after his vehicle reportedly drove off U.S. Highway 59 and into the Neches River, officials said.

According to a preliminary report from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the crash occurred at around 1:43 p.m. near the Polk and Angelina County line. A 2022 Ford Bronco was traveling north on the highway before reportedly traveling off the road, down an embankment and into the Neches River.

DPS identified the driver as 71-year-old Theodore Fajen III of Lufkin, who was pronounced dead on the scene by a justice of the peace.

The investigation remains ongoing and no information is available at this time, DPS said.

HOUSTON (AP) – Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on Wednesday, nearly a year after catastrophic floods killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors at the all-girls Christian camp in Texas. In paperwork filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas in Houston, the camp listed its debt as exceeding $10 million. The camp along the Guadalupe River said it had assets in the range of 100,001 to $500,000.

Families of the victims filed a lawsuit in November saying the camp operators failed to take the necessary steps to protect the girls as life-threatening floodwaters approached on July 4. Camp owner Richard Eastland also died in the flood. All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the river, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.

The bankruptcy filing comes weeks after Camp Mystic halted plans to reopen this summer in the face of outrage from victims’ families and lawmakers that the century-old camp intended to welcome girls back while lawsuits and investigations remained ongoing.