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14 Bodies Recovered after Texas Blast

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Photo Credit: gnislew

By Faith Karimi and Emanuella Grinberg. Two days after a massive fertilizer plant explosion leveled parts of a central Texas town and killed 14 people, residents moved into recovery mode Friday after investigators announced they had nearly finished search and rescue efforts.

The fiery explosion ripped through the heart of the close-knit town of West.

“It’s going to be a long recovery for this community,” Gov. Rick Perry said.

The death toll included the secretary, who was also a member of the volunteer fire department, said Mayor Tommy Muska.

In total, five West firefighters died battling the blaze, along with one Dallas firefighter and four emergency responders, the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas said Thursday. Read more from this story HERE.

Texas town grieves for dead first-responders

BY Associated Press. Buck Uptmor didn’t have to go to West Fertilizer Co. when the fire started. He wasn’t a firefighter like his brother and cousin, who raced toward the plant. But a ranch of horses next to the flames needed to be moved to safety.

“He went to help a friend,” said Joyce Marek, Uptmor’s aunt. “And then it blew.”

Two days after the fertilizer facility exploded in a blinding fireball, authorities announced Friday that they had recovered 14 bodies, confirming for the first time an exact number of people killed. Grieving relatives filed into a church offering comfort for families, as volunteers nearby handed out food to those still unable to return to homes damaged by the massive blast.

Ten of the dead were first-responders — including five from the West Volunteer Fire Department and four emergency medics, West Mayor Tommy Muska said.

The dead included Uptmor and Joey Pustejovsky, the city secretary who doubled as a member of the West Volunteer Fire Department. A captain of the Dallas Fire Department who was off-duty at the time but responded to the fire to help also died. Read more from this story HERE.

A Grim Day for a Small Town

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Photo Credit: Associated Press

By ANN ZIMMERMAN, SHELLY BANJO and NATHAN KOPPEL. This small town just off I-35, known in central Texas as a good place to pull off the highway for Czech pastries, spent Thursday coming to grips with a landscape of flattened homes and diminishing hopes that friends and neighbors will be found alive in the aftermath of a devastating explosion.

The blast Wednesday night at a fertilizer plant here has left more than a dozen dead, and 150 injured. It destroyed a school and 75 or so homes—damaging a sizable portion of a tightknit town of 2,800 with a Czech heritage that stretches back generations.

The majority of the dead are believed to be first responders, who had raced to the scene to try to tame a fire at the plant, not knowing the mammoth blast was coming. The explosion had the force of a 2.1 magnitude earthquake, seismologists said.

Law-enforcement officials are still sifting through the rubble in search of survivors, but none are expected, said Tommy Muska, the town’s mayor. Mr. Muska, who lost his own home on Wednesday, is a volunteer firefighter himself—as well as an insurance agent in town.

“Our town is definitely hurting,” he said. His office was flooded with insurance claims. Read more from this story HERE.

Crews seek survivors, bodies after Texas blast

By NOMAAN MERCHANT and JOHN L. MONE. Rescuers searched the smoking remnants of a Texas farm town Thursday for survivors of a thunderous fertilizer plant explosion, gingerly checking smashed houses and apartments for anyone still trapped in debris while the community awaited word on the number of dead.

Initial reports put the fatalities as high as 15, but later in the day, authorities backed away from any estimate and refused to elaborate. More than 160 people were hurt.

A breathtaking band of destruction extended for blocks around the West Fertilizer Co. in the small community of West. The blast shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and crumpled dozens of homes, an apartment complex, a school and a nursing home. Its dull boom could be heard dozens of miles away from the town about 20 miles north of Waco.

Waco police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton described ongoing search-and-rescue efforts as “tedious and time-consuming,” noting that crews had to shore up much of the wreckage before going in.

There was no indication the blast, which sent up a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke and left behind a crater, was anything other than an industrial accident, he said. Read more from this story HERE.

Man Witnesses Boston Marathon Bombings – then Watches Deadly Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion after Returning Home

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Photo Credit: AP

People keep asking Joe Berti if he feels unlucky.

A bomb exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon moments after Berti finished the race. Two days later, he was in his home state of Texas when he saw a fertilizer plant explode near Waco.

“I was just like, ‘I can’t believe this!’” said Berti, who said he had never witnessed an explosion before. Then he thought: “I just want to get out of here and get away from all these explosions.”

But Berti, as it turns out, is far from unlucky. Instead, he feels fortunate. He left both tragedies unscathed, while members of his running group and his wife – who was closer to the Boston explosion than he was – were also unhurt.

“It’s a miracle,” he said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “People keep saying, ‘Don’t you feel unlucky?’ and I was actually the opposite – saying not only do I not feel unlucky, but I feel blessed that my wife could be 10 yards from the explosion and not have a scratch.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Fertilizer Plant Explosion Leaves More than 100 Wounded in Central Texas; Fatalities Unclear (+video)

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Photo Credit: Washington Post

A massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in central Texas left more than 100 people wounded and killed an unspecified number Wednesday night, officials said, as first responders searched for victims in scores of wrecked homes.

Images of the gargantuan fireball were particularly jarring, coming just two days after a terrorist attack at the finish line of the Boston marathon. Officials in Texas said it was too early to say how the fire that triggered the blast began, and offered no evidence to suggest it involved foul play.

“Right now, we have tremendous amounts of injuries,” D.L. Wilson, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety told reporters shortly after midnight in a televised news conference. “It was massive, just like Iraq, just like the Murrah building in Oklahoma,” he added, referring to the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal building in that city.

Authorities were struggling to get a clear sense of the damage in the tiny town of West, 20 miles north of Waco, because blazes were still raging in the area. They expressed concern about the hazard ammonia billowing through the air could cause.

Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton, a Waco police spokesman told reporters during a news conference early Thursday that firefighters and law enforcement personnel who were in the vicinity of the blast are unaccounted for.

Read more from this story HERE.

Wife of ex-Justice of Peace Now Charged With Murder in Texas DA Killings

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Photo Credit: CNN

The wife of a former justice of the peace in Texas is being held on murder charges in connection with the killings of Kaufman County District Attorney Michael McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, county officials announced Wednesday.

Kim Lene Williams, 46, is also charged with murder in the death of prosecutor Mark Hasse.

She is in jail, with bail set at $10 million. The Kaufman County jail website lists her as being booked about 3 a.m. Wednesday.

The McLellands were killed in March, and Hasse was killed in January.

The arrest warrant said she confessed in detail to her involvement and her husband, Eric Williams’, role in the scheme.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ex Justice of the Peace is Suspect in Texas DA Killings (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty

On April 13, 2013, Eric Williams, a former Kaufman County, Tex. justice of the peace, was arrested on a terroristic threat charge, following a search of his home and a storage unit. The Dallas Morning News reports that he is expected to be charged with capital murder for the deaths of Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse in January, and District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia last month.

Williams, 46, was charged with stealing equipment from the county in 2012 and was aggressively prosecuted by both Hasse and McLelland for the crime. He was found guilty, but instead of serving jail time, Williams was sentenced to probation, and lost his health insurance, his job, and his law license, reports the Morning News.

He is appealing the case, but also faces a second theft charge related to the “misuse of money from a law library fund,” writes the Dallas publication.

Watch video here:

Read more from this story HERE.

14 Slashed, Stabbed With Knife in Texas Campus Assault, 2 Critical

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Photo Credit: AP

A student went on a building-to-building stabbing attack at a Texas community college Tuesday, wounding at least 14 people before being subdued and arrested, authorities said.

The attack at about 11:20 a.m. on the Lone Star Community College System campus sent at least 12 people to area hospitals, including four people taken by helicopter, according to volunteer fire department spokesman Robert Rasa. He said several people refused treatment at the scene and all the wounds were consistent with stabbing.

Sheriff Adrian Garcia said officers responded to the campus after receiving a call about a male “on the loose” stabbing people. He said it was not immediately clear what type of weapon was used.

“Some of the details in the call slip did indicate that students or faculty were actively responding to work to subdue this individual,” Garcia said, describing the man as being about 21 years old and enrolled at the college. “So we’re proud of those folks, but we’re glad no one else is injured any more severely than they are.”

Lone Star officials initially urged people on campus, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of downtown Houston, to take shelter and be on alert for a second suspect. But the sheriff’s department said a short time later that authorities believed just one person was responsible.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Documents Connect Aryan Brotherhood With Mexican Cartels

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

News coverage of the assassinations of Kaufman County, TX Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, District Attorney Mike McLelland, and McLelland’s wife Cynthia has turned to the alleged involvement of a group named the Aryan Brotherhood (AB).

Considering McLelland was part of a task force that investigated the Aryan Brotherhood, and in light of the recent killing of Colorado prison chief Tom Clements allegedly by a member of a white supremacist prison gang, this theory that the AB may have been involved in the murders clearly has some merit.

Yet in that coverage, the mainstream media has gone to great lengths to label ad-infinitum the Aryan Brotherhood as a “white supremacist” group, implying a racial motivation. The AB, even if involved at all, however, may have been motivated not by a “white supremacist” philosophy, but rather by something more mundane. Evidence suggests that the Aryan Brotherhood has morphed into what is primarily a drug-trafficking gang, and there is a more frightening possibility: that the Aryan Brotherhood is acting as a conduit, doing the dirty work for a Mexican drug cartel criminal insurgency into the United States.

In November of last year, for example, an Aryan Brotherhood member went on the record stating that he had helped smuggle hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine across the border from Mexico. According to the Mexican newswire Notimex, the AB member “stated that he had some important connections with Mexican drug cartels.” On Tuesday of this week, a federal task force apprehended an Aryan Brotherhood “general” who “had ounces of crystal methamphetamine” on him at the time of his arrest.

Moreover, since many Republicans and Democrats seek a compromise on immigration reform in short order, it is not surprising that politicians are themselves ignoring the possible connection between the murders and the Mexican cartels, with the notable exception of Governor Rick Perry. After all, if Americans were to find out that the Mexican cartels are operating on U.S. soil, it would likely change the immigration debate and could potentially delay a deal indefinitely.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gov. Perry Says Mexican Drug Cartels Active in Texas, Possibly Responsible for DA's Murders (+video)

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday raised the issue of border security in regard to the recent murders of two state prosecutors.

When asked about the possible involvement of the Aryan Brotherhood in the killings, the Republican governor said it is too early to speculate about who was behind the killings, but added that it also wouldn’t be wise to overlook any angle.

We know the drug cartels are very, very active in our country now. It goes back … to the whole issue of border security and the failure of the federal government . . .

Watch video here:

Read more from this story HERE.

Texas AG to Obama: I’ll Sue if U.N. Arms Treaty is ratified

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Photo Credit: AP

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wrote a letter to President Obama on Tuesday saying that the state will head to court over the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty should Mr. Obama sign it and the U.S. Senate ratify it.

“The UN has concluded its negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty,” Mr. Abbotwrites. “It is now up to you to sign it — or reject it. Do not sign this treaty.”

Mr. Abbott writes that he understands the apparent purpose is to combat illegal arms trafficking around the world, but that the treaty could draw law-abiding gun owners and gun operators “into a complex web of bureaucratic red tape created by a new department at the UN devoted to overseeing the treaty.”

“As with most so-called international-law documents promulgated by the UN, the draft treaty is not written using the precise, unambiguous language required of a good legal document,” he continues. “Instead, the treaty employs sweeping rhetoric and imprecise terminology that could be used by those who seek to undermine our liberties to impose any number of restrictions on the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms.”

Darryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups have distorted the meaning of the treaty. He said it is about the global trade of dangerous weapons, not individual rights within the United States.

Read more from this story HERE.