In the wake of this weekend’s deadly North Texas tornadoes that devastated four counties and killed seven people, we’re also hearing stories of miraculous survival. 23-year-old Elizabeth Gilbert and her fiancé 26-year-old Zach Moore were sheltering inside their Valley View home when it was wiped off the map by the storm, sending them both to the ICU with severe injuries. After days of fighting, Gilbert was released from the hospital this afternoon. It was a moment Gilbert said she nearly couldn’t believe was possible – being wheeled out of Medical City Denton by her family, five days after the Valley…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
As another round of storms soaked an already saturated North Texas, Oncor said crews working to restore power to more than 100,000 customers were slowed. “I feel like we deserve to know what the next week is going to look like and right now we just have no idea,” said Mina Shamsa Burns. Shamsa Burns is now 72 hours into an outage that began Tuesday morning and among the growing number of frustrated customers wondering when help will arrive. In her neighborhood, Eastwood Hills, downed power lines still drape streets. “We know this is happening everywhere. I know everyone’s frustrated.…
Guilty on all counts. That’s the verdict from a New York jury in the trial of former president Donald Trump. It’s the first time an American president has been convicted of a crime. The jury in Manhattan found the 45th president guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election by hiding how he reimbursed his former fixer Michael Cohen for paying off a porn star Stormy Daniels days before the election. “Even though a lot of people saw this coming, it’s still mind-blowing to see the former president of the…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Houston Mayor John Whitmire has called for the termination of “ShotSpotter,” a gunshot detection tool intended to help fight crime. ShotSpotter, deployed in northwest and southeast Houston, uses technology to alert the Houston Police Department (HPD) to gunshots. However, Whitmire expressed doubts about its efficacy. “It’s a gimmick,” Whitmire told on Thursday afternoon. Data from Investigates reveals that ShotSpotter has had minimal impact. Only 5% of alerts from December 2020 through September 2022 resulted in arrests, out of nearly 4,400 alerts during that period. Furthermore, the Houston Chronicle reported that only 20% of alerts led to…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Crews have cleared the aftermath of a fiery crash involving an overturned 18-wheeler Thursday morning. Lt. Scott Spencer with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said all southbound main lanes of I-45 near Rayford and Sawdust were shut down, and multiple northbound lanes were also impacted. SkyEye flew over the active scene, where the truck’s cab had landed on the inside lanes of the freeway’s northbound lanes. The Woodlands Fire Department said it received reports of the big rig flipping over and catching fire just before 10 a.m. Firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the flames while the…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The Houston Police Department (HPD) is continuing its review and reassignment of approximately a quarter million suspended incident reports. During a news conference on Thursday, Commander Elizabeth Lorenzana of HPD’s Special Victims Division stated that out of over 9,000 cases, including suspended sexual assault reports, only misdemeanor reports remain to be reviewed. “Those investigations that need follow-up are being assigned to adult sex crime investigators,” Lorenzana said. At the end of April, Houston police announced the completion of their internal review of the controversial suspension code. However, the independent police oversight board sent it back the…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Giant trucks with large mechanical arms are a welcome sight in The Heights, where Dave Nickerson has been diligently piling storm debris along the city’s right-of-way. “We had to bring everything out from back here, get it out to the curb, cut it up so they could take it,” said Nickerson, who has been using his chainsaw extensively over the past few weeks. The City of Houston’s Solid Waste Department is currently making a first pass to collect debris in every neighborhood and is planning for three passes over the next 90 days. The department reminds…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Recent storms have shattered approximately 4,000 windows in downtown buildings, according to the Houston Downtown Management District. The affected buildings include the Chevron Building, Pennzoil Tower, Bank of America Building, Wells Fargo Plaza, and Hyatt Regency Downtown. Raudel Avila, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University, explained, “The building arrangement creates tunnels, so the wind speeds are very, very high.” These tunnels can significantly increase wind pressure. The shattered windows are primarily located on the east and west sides of the buildings, with some angled upward, like one in the Pennzoil Tower. The damage…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Houston police are investigating after at least 20 cars were broken into inside a gated parking garage at a Greenway Plaza apartment building. Residents at The Grand at Upper Kirby, who wished to remain anonymous, discovered the break-ins on Thursday morning. “This is by far the worst thing that could have happened to me,” said a Mercedes owner who found one of his back windows smashed and $400 in cash stolen. He was planning to attend his niece’s graduation. “It’s something that I can’t get back. My niece graduated. We waited 18 years for this.” A…
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — In 2017, Stephen and Ellen Leventhal’s street resembled a river after Hurricane Harvey unleashed 1 trillion gallons of water across Harris County. Upon returning to their home post-evacuation, they found it unrecognizable. “We put items on our dining room table, thinking they’d be safe,” Ellen Leventhal recalled. “But the flood knocked the table over. The worst part was losing our wedding album on our anniversary. We thought it was stored high enough, but we lost every picture. You couldn’t even walk inside; you had to crawl over debris.” This wasn’t the first time the Leventhals experienced…
