Texas Today: Air Force instructor faces sex allegations

SAN ANTONIO — An Air Force instructor has been charged with sexually assaulting female trainees at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.

Joint Base spokesman Brent Boller said Tuesday that Staff Sgt. Luis Walker faces up to five military charges that include aggravated sexual assault, sodomy, adultery and obstruction of justice.

The allegations involve 10 trainees dating to October 2010. The charges were handed up by an Article 32 investigation, which is the military equivalent of a grand jury.

A brigadier general will decide as early as next month whether to uphold the charges and send the case to trial in a military court-martial.

2 charged in woman’s death

GEORGETOWN — Two people have been jailed in the death of an 18-year-old woman found shot to death and dumped off Interstate 35.

The body of Tynesia Brown of Bedford was found south of Jarrell on Nov. 14.

This week, authorities arrested 26-year-old Darius Lamar Davidson of Dallas and 20-year-old Traci Marie Guzman of Birmingham, Ala. Guzman, awaiting extradition to Texas, is being held in Birmingham on a charge of murder. Her bond was set at $1 million. Davidson, charged with tampering with evidence, was being held in the Williamson County Jail on $250,000 bond.

Jindal campaigns for Rick Perry in Iowa

BATON ROUGE, La.— Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is in Iowa this week to help Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign in the last push before the first-in-the-nation Jan. 3 caucuses.

Jindal spokesman Frank Collins said Jindal will continue campaigning in Iowa for Perry, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, before returning to Baton Rouge today.

Perry is trying to mount a comeback following widely panned appearances in debates. Jindal has previously traveled to Texas to help raise money for Perry’s campaign.

3 pounds of cocaine found in shoes

HOUSTON — A 19-year-old New York woman arriving in Houston on a flight from Jamaica has been arrested after a drug dog alerted authorities to narcotics in two pairs of shoes in her luggage.

Tests showed the narcotics to be 3 pounds of cocaine.

Brielle Latoi Orridge of the Bronx, N.Y., is awaiting a federal court appearance on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine.

Orridge arrived Sunday at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport on a Continental Airlines flight from Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Conviction on the charge could get her up to 40 years in prison.

Man pays $1 parking ticket 58 years late

HOUSTON — A Houston man said he wants to clear his conscience and pay a $1 parking ticket he got 58 years ago, even though the city’s traffic violation records have been purged.

Dale Crawford sent a letter to city officials after finding the ticket among some keepsakes. He said it’s a debt that he wants to pay, though it’s a “small, almost unnoticeable amount.”

Crawford received the ticket Feb. 3, 1953, the day he was inducted into the Army. He left his 1946 Nash at a parking meter at the induction station. When his dad was late retrieving the car, it had been ticketed.

Man decapitated by rail car in Hitchcock

HITCHCOCK — Galveston County authorities said a man was found dead after apparently being decapitated by a railroad car.

An autopsy has been ordered on the body located Monday night along a rail line near Hitchcock. Employees of Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway discovered the body.

Sheriff’s Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said no signs of foul play were initially found.

$150 billion award for victim’s family

LA GRANGE — An attorney says a Texas jury has awarded the largest verdict he has ever heard of — $150 billion to the family of a man who died years after being set afire as an 8-year-old.

The family’s attorney Craig Sico said the punitive damage award is symbolic and the family expects none of it will be paid.

The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, is currently imprisoned on an unrelated sexual assault charge. He was never charged and denies involvement in the 2010 death of 20-year-old Robbie Middleton, who was doused with gasoline and set on fire 12 years earlier.

6 accused of fake payroll checks

SILSBEE — Police said six people have been accused of passing about $40,000 worth of fake payroll checks in Southeast Texas.

Silsbee police Chief Mark Davis said Tuesday that five suspects who remain in custody are from Honduras and are believed to be in the U.S. illegally. He said a suspect from Houston has posted bond. All have been charged with forgery.

—Herald wire reports

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