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MIDLAND – UPDATE: The Texas Department of Public Safety has released new information about the shooting in Midland that happened Friday morning.

“This morning, at about 8:00 CST, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), along with the Midland Police Department (MPD) and other local, state and federal law enforcement partners, responded to reports of an active shooter in the 4600 block of West Wall Street in Midland, Texas. Preliminary information shows that when they arrived, the suspect, now identified as Victor Mata Villarreal, 45, who resided in Odessa, began firing shots at officers and bystanders and then barricaded himself inside an abandoned veterinary clinic building.

DPS and other responding officers immediately established a perimeter around the building to mitigate the threat. After a standoff, the suspect was located inside the building, deceased at around 12:30 p.m. CST.

At this time, DPS can confirm one victim is dead, and 10 others are injured. No law enforcement officers were injured.

Villarreal had been wanted for attempted capital murder of a peace officer after firing multiple shots at an MPD officer during a vehicle pursuit on Wednesday, June 10, 2026.

At the request of MPD, the Texas Rangers are investigating this active shooter incident. As this is an active investigation, no additional information is being released. The Texas Rangers ask that anyone with information related to the incident please come forward.

Drivers are asked to please find alternate routes around the area as authorities remain on the scene. The roads where the shooting occurred were to remain closed for the next 24 – 48 hours.

Ector County Sheriff Mike Griffis has confirmed the suspect in a shooting in Midland Friday morning is the same suspect wanted out of Midland earlier this week after investigators said he tried to kill a police officer. This information has not yet been confirmed by Midland agencies or the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Victor Mata Villarreal was accused of firing a rifle at an officer during a late-night traffic stop Wednesday before fleeing the scene.

According to the City of Midland, the incident began around 11:23 p.m. Wednesday, June 10 in the 4800 block of Anetta Street when a Midland Police officer tried to stop a vehicle.

Police said the vehicle did not stop right away and continued for several blocks before stopping in the 4700 block of Comanche Drive. Investigators say the driver, later identified as Victor Mata Villarreal, got out of the vehicle and fired rounds from a rifle at the officer.

The officer returned fire, but authorities said Villarreal got back into the vehicle and fled the area. The vehicle was later found abandoned a short distance away. Police said an extensive search was conducted, but Villarreal was not located.

The officer was not injured during the incident.

(UVALDE, Texas) — Former Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo is set to return to a Texas courtroom on Friday, as the judge overseeing his criminal trial weighs moving the case out of Uvalde and whether the whole thing might have to wait because US Customs and Border Protection has refused to cooperate.

Arredondo in 2024 was charged with 10 counts of endangering students by failing to quickly respond to the 2022 mass shooting. The criminal case has stalled due to two ongoing civil lawsuits that seek to force agents with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit — involved in taking down the gunman — to testify in the case.

Nineteen students and two of their teachers were killed when Robb Elementary School was attacked by a former student on the last day of school, May 24, 2022.

Arredondo led the response to the 2022 shooting rampage, and prosecutors allege that he ignored his training by waiting some 77 minutes before agents stormed a classroom and killed the gunman. Earlier this year, a jury acquitted former school police officer Adrian Gonzales on similar charges after a three-week trial.

Families of the victims responded to that verdict with outrage and some are looking to Arredondo’s trial as another opportunity for justice.

“We had a little hope, but it wasn’t enough,” Jacinto Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jackie died in the shooting, said after Gonzales’ acquittal in January. “Again, we are failed. I don’t even know what to say.”

Arredondo has pleaded not guilty, arguing he followed his training and saying he did not consider himself as the incident commander that day, though investigators said he was just that. Arredondo’s attorney Paul Looney told ABC News that he believes the case against Arredondo is weaker than the failed prosecution of Gonzales.

“They tried the one they thought that they had the best shot at, but now they’re going to put everything they’ve got into doing this one, because they do want to win at least something,” Looney said.

Friday’s status conference comes as Judge Sid Harle weighs the future of the case. The judge has said he wants to determine how the trial against Arredondo can proceed amid the ongoing litigation with CBP and whether — as in the case of Gonzales — the trial ought to be moved out of Uvalde.

Both Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell and Arredondo filed federal lawsuits to compel the federal agents to cooperate with investigators and potentially testify at trial.

“The three border patrol agents whose cooperation is now being sought by District Attorney Mitchell — two of whom participated in the actual killing of the gunman and the third who was present in the hallway during most of the incident — are essential to the pending Texas criminal prosecution,” Mitchell wrote in her lawsuit.

CBP attorneys have argued that the request for testimony is unreasonable, unnecessary and “negatively impacts CBP operations and national security” by taking up resources and potentially disclosing sensitive information.

Attorneys have argued that CBP revealed enough information through the investigative summaries prepared by the Texas Rangers and a report released by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

“It is unclear from your request how testimony from the identified CBP employees is genuinely necessary to the proceedings,” an attorney for CBP said in a court filing.

Earlier this year, a new judge was assigned to the lawsuit filed by Mitchell, and this week she filed a motion to schedule a status conference in that case. Looney, who filed a separate lawsuit largely mirroring the District Attorney’s, said he anticipates the litigation will take another eight months to a year.

Friday’s hearing will be held in Uvalde, though the trial of Gonzales was held in Corpus Christi to find an impartial jury, due to the widespread impact of the shooting on the Uvalde community.

Arredondo’s lawyer said he expects Harle to grant his motion for a venue change, though he claimed there is “no sense of urgency” to resolve the venue issue while the case remains stalled by the ongoing civil litigation.

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MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — Police say the suspect in a West Texas shooting that killed one person and injured nine others is dead. The shooter had been locked in a standoff Friday morning with police in Midland, Texas, hours after the shooting began. Midland police said the active shooter situation ended hours after the gunfire erupted in one part of the city before ending up near a veterinary hospital. Police did not immediately say how the suspect died.

The shooter opened fire in Midland in an attack Friday morning that left one person dead and at least nine others injured, the city’s mayor said. The suspect was in a standoff with officers about two hours after the shooting that erupted around 8 a.m. in one part of the city before ending up near a veterinary hospital, police said. It sounded like at least 40 shots were fired, said Andrea Mendias who works at an auto body shop near the veterinary hospital. Video from Mendias showed officers pouring out of the back of an armored police vehicle and police deploying robots into the area.

Mayor Lori Blong said the situation was still evolving and that officers were containing the situation. Midland Memorial Hospital said four people were in the operating room and five others were in stable condition. The city with about 140,000 residents sits in the heart of the state’s oil region and was near the site of a deadly shooting rampage just six years ago. In that shooting, a gunman who had been fired from his oil services job killed seven people and wounded two dozen others while firing at random as he drove around the Odessa and Midland areas. The two cities are more than 300 miles (482 kilometers) west of Dallas.

LA PRYOR (AP) – U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins watched sterile flies being released to fight the New World screwworm on Thursday and visited the Texas ranch where one of the first cases of the pest was detected. The screwworm could devastate the nation’s cattle industry.

Later, she repeated her assertion that former President Joe Biden’s administration is responsible for the parasite’s return to the U.S. six decades after it was eradicated. Democratic leaders say cuts to the nation’s agriculture agency under President Donald Trump are to blame.

Screwworms are on their way to becoming a billion-dollar international problem, but can be contained if ranchers are vigilant, watch their herds and other wildlife, and quickly treat any infestations, Rollins said. She pointed to the calf where screwworms were found six days earlier in a wound where its umbilical cord had been attached.

“He couldn’t be happier. He’s bouncing around the pasture,” Rollins said.

Screwworms are flies that lay their eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and feed on living flesh rather than dead tissues. Scientists say releasing sterile flies to mate with females is the most effective way to control the population, a strategy that has worked for decades. A warming planet is complicating efforts by giving screwworms, which thrive in hot, humid weather, more places to spread.

Billion-dollar response planned to fight screwworms

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing an all-out assault on the screwworm, which had been contained in the narrow isthmus of Panama for decades.

No matter the cause, driving screwworms back south and keeping them out of the U.S. will be expensive. The USDA estimated it would spend over $1 billion on efforts to save cattle herds and other livestock.

About $750 million will go toward building and operating a plant capable of producing up to 300 million sterile flies a week. The technique has been used for decades, as female screwworms mate just once, and if they choose a sterile mate, their eggs don’t hatch, and the fly population dwindles.

The goal is to protect the U.S. cattle industry. Experts think the parasite shouldn’t cause an immediate increase in near-record-high beef prices as long as it doesn’t turn into an outbreak and large groups of cattle die. Screwworms don’t affect food safety.

The parasite has already disrupted the Mexican beef industry. The U.S. closed its southern ports to Mexican livestock last summer.

Mexico has had more than 28,000 cases of screwworms since the flies returned two years ago, mostly confined to its southern states. The Mexican government stopped the importation of almost all live animals from the U.S. after screwworms were discovered here.

Scientists aren’t sure how screwworms emerged again

The U.S. had been almost entirely rid of screwworms for 60 years, with scientists in North and Central America eventually driving it down to the containment zone in Panama. But in 2023, the flies emerged and began heading back north.

Experts say screwworms are here to stay at least for this summer. Seven cases have already been detected in Texas and New Mexico. A 12-mile (20-kilometer) quarantine zone goes up around every place a case is found.

As they work toward a solution, scientists say they aren’t sure exactly what led to screwworms leaving the area in Panama where they were boxed in.

“I don’t have the answer to that one, and I don’t know if anyone does. It doesn’t help us to speculate,” said Jonathan Cammack, a professor of livestock entomology and parasitology at Oklahoma State University.

The key now is to ramp up the sterile fly program and get international cooperation to get the pests back down to Panama, he said.

Climate change is also helping drive the spread of screwworms, said Lee Haines, an associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.

“The fly is a creature of warmth as its entire life cycle, from egg to adult, can complete in as little as three weeks under tropical conditions,” Haines said.

Even Canada has temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas. The parasites prefer humid areas where temperatures are at least 77 F (25 C), and those days are increasing further north.

Democrats question cuts; Republicans blame immigration

As Rollins moves quickly to implement a billion-dollar response to the screwworm outbreak, she has also blamed the Biden administration, noting that it was in office as the parasite began moving north again.

She said without showing any evidence the flies were with animals that followed immigrants north as well as hitching rides with cattle and other animals being sold by Mexican cartels outside of regular markets.

“People moving north to America, bringing their livestock with them, the Mexican cartels with the illicit cattle traffic, we knew it was coming,” Rollins told the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday.

Nearly a dozen Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to Rollins this week questioning whether job losses at the USDA have hurt food inspections and livestock safety programs.

Nearly 20% of the counties in the U.S. that started 2025 with at least one employee from the federal Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service ended the year with none, the letter said.

Rollins said she has moved over 100 USDA employees into the screwworm response. She said it has been one of her top priorities since Trump picked her to lead the USDA.

But Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California said blaming Biden is shortsighted and again shows the Trump administration creates problems through reckless spending cuts.

“The life cycle of a screwworm is about 14 to 54 days, depending on temperature and humidity. The Trump administration has been in office for over 500 days,” Lieu said earlier this week. “This is on the Trump administration. They need to own up to it, and they need to apologize.”

POLK COUNTY, Texas (KETK) — The discovery of an indoor marijuana farm in Polk County has led to the arrest of a man, and several others to follow, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said on Thursday.

While conducting a search warrant at a Livingston residence off of FM 943 on Wednesday, investigators located a “sophisticated indoor marijuana grow operation” on the property. Investigators were able to recover over 50 but less than 2,000 pounds of marijuana from the farm, amounting to an estimated worth of $100,000.

At the home, one resident was identified as Alexander Vega, who admitted to growing the marijuana. He was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana, a second-degree felony, the sheriff’s office said. Currently at the Polk County Jail, his bond has been set at $100,000.

Several other names connected to the farm were discovered during the investigation, and more suspects may be charged in the future.

“Due to the potential risks associated with chemicals and materials commonly used in indoor marijuana grow operations, members of the State’s Methamphetamine Initiative Group (MIG), a Houston HIDTA initiative, responded to assist with the removal of the marijuana plants and to help identify chemicals located on the property,” the sheriff’s office said.

As for the land, residences and two vehicles, the sheriff’s office looks to seek seizure through forfeiture proceedings.

“This investigation is another example of the dedication and persistence of our Narcotics Division and our law enforcement partners. Indoor grow operations are not simple marijuana cases,” Sheriff Byron Lyons said. “These operations can involve large amounts of drugs, dangerous chemicals, electrical hazards, and organized criminal activity. Our office will continue to aggressively investigate narcotics trafficking in Polk County and hold those responsible accountable.”