Home > Waco Breaking News > Archives > 2008 > November > 20
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Man sentenced to 55 years in prison for knifepoint robbery
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- link: The trial: Day 1
A 19th State District Court jury sentenced Joshua Jimenez, 37, to 55 years in prison and a $1,110 fine for robbing a Valero store at knifepoint in July.
The jury deliberated for about 30 minutes before reaching its verdict. Jimenez will have to serve at least half of that sentence before he is eligible for parole.
Jimenez faced from 25 years to life in prison.
In reaching its guilty verdict earlier today, the jury took about an hour to deliberate.
Jimenez told the court that the incident was actually a drug deal that went awry with the store’s clerk.
Prosecutor Hilary LaBorde showed jurors a portion of a video showing Jimenez brandishing a knife and demanding money.
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Jury deciding fate of convicted robber
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- link: The trial: Day 1
A 19th State District Court jury is now deliberating the punishment of Joshua Jimenez, 37, who was found guilty of robbing a Valero store at knifepoint in July.
Jimenez faces from 25 years to life in prison.
In reaching its guilty verdict earlier today, the jury took about an hour to deliberate.
Jimenez told the court that the incident was actually a drug deal that went awry with the store’s clerk.
Prosecutor Hilary LaBorde showed jurors a portion of a video showing Jimenez brandishing a knife and demanding money.
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Shannon Elizabeth at Baylor? (updated 2:39 p.m.)
Actress Shannon Elizabeth was seen at Baylor University today, and has visited other locations throughout Waco. She was spotted on campus with a film crew.
Two sources at Baylor said they didn’t know anything about Elizabeth’s visit, saying “that’s not to say it’s not true,” but a third source did confirm Elizabeth was in town.
Elizabeth grew up in Waco and attended Waco High, where she played tennis.
The actress rose to prominence with her role in the 1999 film “American Pie.”
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Former Texas AG Mattox dies
Jim Mattox, the former Democratic attorney general of Texas, has died.
He died in his sleep, a former spokesman, Kelly Fero, told the Austin American-Statesman today.
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Beware the giant alligator
A co-worker received an e-mail this morning from a former employee forwarding an e-mail he got about a giant alligator lurking in Lake Conroe. Click on each of the photographs for a larger image.
The photographs you see here are genuine, but all the text surrounding these shots are fake, according to the Web site hoax-slayer.com.
This photo claims to be a picture was taken by a KTBS helicopter flying over Lake Conroe, near Houston. Well, KTBS is out of Shreveport, La. No way they’re sending a chopper that far for anything (and I kind of doubt the station even has a helicopter). As soon as I saw that, I was suspicious and started Googling “big gator Lake Conroe.”
The hoax-slayer.com site notes that other versions of the message use alternative locations, including Lake George (Florida), Cross Lake (Louisiana) and Lake Murray (South Carolina).
In fact, the photographs were taken by Terri Jenkins of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a wildlife refuge near Savannah, Ga. According to information in a 2004 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service press release:
The photographs of this deer-eating alligator were taken from the air by Terri Jenkins, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service District Fire Management Officer. She was preparing to ignite a prescribed fire at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 miles south of Savannah, Georgia, on March 4, 2004.
Jenkins took the photographs from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helicopter used for igniting controlled fires. She estimates that the alligator was at least 12 or 13 feet long.
The e-mail my friend received then jumps to a third photo seen here with this accompanying text:
This alligator was found between Athens and Palestine, Texas, near a house. Game wardens were forced to shoot the alligator-guess he wouldn’t cooperate …
Anita and Charlie Rogers could hear the bellowing in the night. Their neighbors had been telling them that they had seen a mammoth alligator in the waterway that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as exaggerations.
‘I didn’t believe it,’ Charles Rogers said.
Friday they realized the stories were, if anything, understated.
Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens had to shoot the beast. Joe Goff, 6’5’ tall, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, walks past a 23-foot, 1-inch alligator that he shot and killed in their back yard.
It seemed to imply that this is the same alligator, but Lake Conroe is nowhere near Athens and Palestine. I’m not sure about the validity of this picture.
But it sure gives you something to talk about.
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Another Waco restaurant closes
Who is it? Click here for the Mike’s Marketplace blog to find out.
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Jury finds man guilty in Waco robbery trial
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- link: The trial: Day 1
A 19th State District Court jury has found Joshua Jimenez, 37, guilty of robbing a Valero store at knifepoint in July.
The jury took about an hour to deliberate. The punishment phase is starting now.
Jimenez told the court that the incident was actually a drug deal that went awry with the store’s clerk.
Prosecutor Hilary LaBorde showed jurors a portion of a video showing Jimenez brandishing a knife and demanding money.
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Waco woman’s home damaged in overnight fire
A Waco woman returned home early today from her overnight job at a nursing home to find that, while she was gone, a fire had broken out in her home, and that most of her uninsured belongings were too damaged to save.
At about 3:30 a.m. today, Waco firefighters responded to Nireta Oliver’s 1124 Preston St. home, and extinguished a fire in her dining room, said Waco Fire Marshal Jerry Hawk.
He said the fire started at an extension cord that was plugged into an outlet in the dining room to a window unit. The rest of the house suffered smoke damage, he said.
While the house is not a total loss, Oliver’s belongings were uninsured, Hawk said. Oliver, who Hawk said is in her late 40s, is staying with friends until her house can be repaired.
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Bengals receiver deactivated for tonight’s NFL game
OK, you Fantasy Football fanatics, pull Chad Ocho Cinco off your roster if you have time because the Cincinnati Bengals have deactivated the controversial wide receiver for tonight’s game vs. the Steelers, according to a press release issued by the team.
The team says it’s for an unspecified rules violation, but there was no further explanation. The team also says it won’t address his situation with the media until after tonight’s game.
He used to be called Chad Johnson, but changed his name in favor of the Spanish pronunciation of his jersey number, 85.
I’ll just call him Chad Mucho Stinko.
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Jury deliberates in Waco robbery trial
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- link: The trial: Day 1
A 19th State District Court jury has begun deliberations this morning in the aggravated robbery trial of Joshua Jimenez, who allegedly robbed a Valero store at knifepoint in July.
Prosecutor J.R. Vicha told jurors that while it was a 10-second crime and that the trial was relatively short, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a serious crime.
Jimenez told the court that the incident was actually a drug deal that went awry with the store’s clerk.
Prosecutor Hilary LaBorde showed jurors a portion of a video showing Jimenez brandishing a knife and demanding money. That led to an outburst by Jimenez.
“Where’s the other video? Where’s the other video?” Jimenez said, referring to his claims that approached the clerk twice and the second video showed his confrontation with the clerk after discovering that an iPod he had traded for didn’t work.
Judge Ralph Strother admonished Jimenez for his outburst.
“I’m just sayin,’” Jimenez replied.
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Tony Romo is a good guy
Nice to hear some stories about the good things football players do. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo befriended a homeless man outside a Dallas theater, paying for the man’s ticket and sitting beside him during the movie, the Dallas Morning News reports.
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18-year-old fills school board seat in West Texas
A school district in West Texas has selected an 18-year-old college student to fill a school board seat left vacant when a board member resigned last month.
School board members in the Socorro public school system in El Paso appointed Tanya Kayla Loya, 18, to the board Tuesday, choosing the University of Texas at El Paso student over former board presidents, educators and past candidates.
Loya is a junior political science major at UTEP who entered high school at age 12 and graduated when she was 16.
“Generally speaking, I think people may think, ‘What are you smoking, picking an 18-year-old kid?’ but again she is like no other 18-year-old that I have ever met before,” trustee Craig Patton said in a story in the El Paso Times.
In her new position, Loya will deal with economic strains threatening the district’s budget and will help select a new superintendent for the district, which has about 40,000 students and six high schools. She will fill the seat until the May election and said she plans to run in that race.
“I am going to come in and do my job without having a personal agenda, without being swayed,” Loya said. “I understand my role, now as a school board trustee, is to gain the overall consensus of everyone at-large in our community.”
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Obama adviser: Arizona governor likely Homeland choice
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, an early Barack Obama supporter from the southwestern part of the country, is the likely choice for the job of secretary of homeland security, a top Obama adviser said today.
The adviser cautioned that no final decision has been made on the position, which involves directing the massive department created by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
The adviser agreed to discuss the situation only on grounds of anonymity because of the private nature of the screening process for Obama’s Cabinet. Napolitano, who once was Arizona’s attorney general, was among the first of the Democratic governors to commit to him.
Several news organizations reported today that Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker, who was Obama’s national campaign finance chairman, is his leading choice to become secretary of commerce. But the Obama adviser disputed the reports.
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Jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 16-year high
New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said today, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market expected to get even worse next year.
The government said new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 from a downwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That’s much higher than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 505,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.
That is also the highest level of claims since July 1992, the department said, when the U.S. economy was coming out of a recession.
The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, was even worse: it rose to 506,500, the highest in more than 25 years.
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Lawyer: Michael Jackson to appear in London court
It’s been kind of quiet lately concerning the King of Pop, hasn’t it? Well, no more.
Michael Jackson has agreed to appear in person at a London court to respond to a Bahraini sheik’s $7 million lawsuit, the singer’s lawyer said today in this Associated Press story.
Jackson had asked to testify by a video link from the U.S. because of an unspecified illness. But his lawyer, Robert Englehart, informed the court today that Jackson “has been cleared by his medical advisers to travel in two days’ time.”
The singer is scheduled to give evidence at the High Court on Monday.
Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the second son of the king of Bahrain, says Jackson reneged on a contract for an album, a candid autobiography and a stage play after accepting millions in advances. Jackson claims the money was a gift.
This is the same sheik who befriended Jackson when he was facing child molestation charges a few years back.
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Teen, father die after fast-food argument
Authorities say a 16-year-old boy shot his father during an argument over a fast-food order then turned the gun on himself — and both have died after nearly two days in the hospital.
Robert Lee Mueller Jr. and Robert Lee Mueller, 59, died late Tuesday after almost two days in critical care, the Houston Chronicle reported on its Web site Wednesday.
They had been hospitalized since Sunday, when the shootings took place at their home in an unincorporated area near Kemah, located 35 miles southeast of Houston.
According to the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department, the argument took place after the teen returned from a fast food restaurant with food the father had not ordered. The father was shot once in the head. The boy shot himself after police arrived.
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Crude-oil futures nearing $50 a barrel
Prices may drop at the pump even more for next week’s Thanksgiving travels. According to Marketwatch.com, crude-oil futures fell today for a fifth straight session, approaching $50 a barrel as global stocks slumped and worries deepened that a weak global economy will cut into energy demand.
Crude for December delivery, which expires today, dropped $1.81, or 3.4 percent, to $51.81 a barrel in early electronic trading. Crude has dropped 11 percent since last Thursday. Front-month crude contracts haven’t dropped below $50 since May 2005.
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It’ll get colder today
We’re expecting another cold front to arrive today. Before it hits, we should reach a high near 66 degrees under mostly sunny skies. The north wind shouldn’t arrive with winds as strong as last week.
Tonight’s low will drop to around 34 degrees. It’ll feel colder with a north-northeast wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.
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