Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 341, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 22, 2011 Page: 3 of 10
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Sweetwater Reporter
Thursday, December 22, 2011 ■ Page 3
Former El Paso County
judge released on bond
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A former El Paso County
judge is free on $50,000 bond after spending six days in
jail on federal corruption charges.
'\nthonv Cobos was released Wednesday afternoon
after a federal magistrate in El Paso set bond. An indict-
ment accuses the former county judge of receiving
bribes and campaign contributions in exchange for his
influence in refinancing $40 million of the county's debt
and replacing the county's financial advisor.
If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.
Cobos was the only one of Dur arrested Friday in an
ongoing corruption probe not to receive bond the same
day. Cobos was denied bond after refusing to discuss his
personal assets without a lawyer present.
Skull identified as
2004 Texas flood victim
SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) — A skull found this year
in the drought-lowered Blanco River has been identified
as a Centra Texas woman missing since 2004 flooding.
The Hays County Sheriffs Office on Wednesday after
noon announced positive identification of 24-year-old
Laurie Pineda of Kyle.
DNA testing was used to identify Pineda, who was
with a friend when their car was swept away by flood-
waters on Nov. 14, 2004.
Officials say the man with Pineda told authorities that
both made it out of the vehicle at a low-water crossing.
Jason Schmidt managed to grab a tree, but Pined; 3
body was never found.
Some people who were fishing discovered the skull in
March.
Squirrels! Critters chew
up River Walk lighting
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Some toothy residents along
San .Antonio's famed River Walk have been causing
holiday problems.
Squirrels are blamed for chewing through the wires of
a new seasonal lighting system.
The San Antonio Express-News (http:/, it.lv/v9riMg)
reported Thursday that city officials and the contractor
are trying to figure out how to stop the squirrels and not
harm the critters.
Paula Stallcup, with the city's downtown operations,
says the previous holiday lighting system involved bulbs
hung on the tips of limbs and squirrels didn't venture
out that far.
The new system has LED lights wrapped around more
squirrel-friendly tree trunks and branches.
City leaders in August approved a more than $580,000
contract with Preferred Landscape & Lighting. A cost
estimate for replacing the damaged LED lights is not yet
available.
Family hopes $1508 civil
award prompts charges
HOUSTON (AP) - An attorney who persuaded a Texas
jury to award one of the largest civil verdicts ever says he
and his clients don't expect to collect any of the $150 bil-
lion judgment, but they hope it helps persuade prosecutors
to seek charges against a man they say doused a boy with
gasoline and set him on fire.
Robbie Middleton survived his horrific injuries for 12
years before dying last year of a rare form of skin cancer,
which attorneys argued was related to the extensive burns
he suffered on his eighth birthday. Lawyer Craig Sico and
Middleton's family said they now hope for a renewed inves-
tigation of Don Wilburn Collins, who Middleton accused of
setting him on fire.
Collins never faced criminal charges in Middleton's case,
in part, prosecutors said, because of inconsistencies in the
evidence and difficulty obtaining information from such
a young victim. Now 26, Collins is in prison for an unre-
lated sexual assault conviction against another 8-year-old
boy and for failing to register as a sex offender. He is to be
released next year.
He did not appear in court during the civil trial and no
attorney appeared on his behalf.
Sico said he asked jurors to make a statement in the case
by topping the biggest civil verdict he was aware of — a $ 145
billion judgment handed down against the tobacco compa-
nies in Florida in 2000.
"We said, 'If you want your message to be heard, it needs
to be significant and that's how people hear about these
things. And we leave it to you.' We made no request," Sico
said.
The Fayette County jury returned the $150 billion verdict
Tuesday after a two-day trial.
The Florida tobacco verdict of $145 billion, which was
later overturned, had stood as the largest U.S. civil jury
verdict, said John T. Nockleby, professor and director of the
civil justice program at the Loyola Marymount University
School of Law in Los Angeles.
"It's the kind of award that has no meaning outside of
an expression of moral outrage," he said. "They could have
awarded a trillion dollars, and it would have made no dif-
ference."
Middleton's mother, Colleen Middleton, said Wednesday
the family hadn't really thought about the size of the judg-
ment.
"We're never going to see any money," she said. "What
we thought was please let these people realize Robert was
precious, like everybody else's child, and he didn't deserve
this."
'When they came back with the $150 billion, I was like
'They get it.' And that made me feel so good," she said.
Montgomery County Attorney David Walker said
Wednesday that the sheriffs department's cold case unit
already has been reviewing the Middleton burning case for
several months.
"I will tell you the case is an extremely difficult case given
the evidence that was discovered years ago and the nature of
that evidence," Walker said. "Young Robbie was so trauma-
tized and so damaged that information from him was very,
very difficult to obtain."
Walker said there also were some inconsistencies in the
evidence, not necessarily from Robbie Middleton, that
presented a challenge to prosecutors. He declined to elabo-
rate.
"But I can tell you if it can be properly and successfully
be prosecuted certainly it would have been back then and it
would be now," Walker said.
Robbie Middleton was attacked on June 28, 1998 — his
eighth birthday — as he walked through a wooded area in
the Southeast Texas town of Splendora, 35 northeast of
Houston. A neighbor who discovered the boy told a 911
dispatcher that the burned child said, "Some kids threw the
gas on him."
When police questioned the boy, who was burned over 99
percent of his body, he told them: "Don did it."
Collins, who was 13 at the time, was taken into custody
five days later. He was held in juvenile detention for six
weeks before he was released without charges to the custody
of an uncle appointed as his legal guardian.
In a video deposition taken just before he died last year,
Middletor, identified Collins as a person who sexually
assaulted him about two weeks before the fire attack.
Middleton's parents eventually moved about 100 miles
east to Fayette County, where they filed their lawsuit against
Collins.
Allshouses to speak at Evangelical Methodist
1
8
Six guilty in Texas over
marijuana in melon loads
HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors in Houston say six men
have pleaded guilty to smuggling more than a ton and
a-half of marijuana in loadt watermelons
Investigators say he marijuana, in loads transported
since June, was hidden in pallets of watermelons being
trucked from McAllen to a warehouse in Houston.
U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson says two men pleaded
guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to possess with intent to
distribute marijuana. Four others pleaded guilty Friday.
The men are from Houston, Roma and Rio Grande City.
All will be sentenced in March. They face up to life in
prison and maximum $8 million fines
Officers confiscated bales of marijuana with a total
weight of 3,158 pounds.
7.5 million Texans will travel
daring the year-end holidays
Bill and Lydia Allshouse will be speaking at the Evangelical Methodist Church at 700 Lamar Street on Wednesday
night, Dec. 28 at 6:30 p.m. Lydia is the daughter of William and Joyce Mayo. They are home on furlough raising
money to go back to Old Mexico as missionaries.
In Texas, new EPA regulations
cheered, decried
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas environmentalists are
cheering new federal standards announced Wednesday
that will force coal- and oil-fired power plants to reduce
mercury emissions and toxic pollutants or shut down.
Power ldustry leaders, however, said the pricey chang-
es could lead to layoffs and undo strain on the state's
grid.
Texas, which has 19 coal-fired power plants — more
than any other state — and plans to build nine more,
is among the few states still adding coal-fired plants. It
also releases more air pollutants than any other state.
"he new standards have an estimated price tag of $9.6
billion, ranking them among the most expensive in the
Environmental Protection Agency's histoiy. The new
rules were unveiled in Washington by EPA administra-
tor Lisa Jackson.
"This is big. Texans shouldn't be living with the
health risks of mercury and other pollutants,' said Tom
"Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of the con-
sumer activist group Public Citizen.
The only thing more shocking than the large amounts
of toxic chemicals released into the air each year by coal
and oil fired power plants is the fact that these emis-
sions have been allowed for so many years," added Ilan
Levin, associate director of the Environmental Integrity
Project.
According to Levin's group, Texas is the nation's top
power plant mercury pc uter, with its coal-fired power
plants emitting 16.9 percent of the total U.S. mercury
air emissions )r 2010 The Department of State Health
Services has issued fish consumption advisories for
300,000 acres of Texas lakes, according to advocacy
group Environment Texas.
American Electric Power, the parent company of AEP
Texas, has already spent $7 billion to reduce emissions
since 1990 in the 11 states it serves, said Gary Gibbs,
AEP Texas' manager of environmental and governmen-
tal affairs.
He said the company isn't opposing the new EPA
regulations, but rather the time frame. Under the new
es, companies are given three years to decrease emis-
sions of mercury and other toxins, and can apply for a
fourth year to install equipment.
Gibbs also said the latest rules are especially costly
because they come 011 the heels of EPA regulations
released this summer that require states to reduce sul-
fur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, both of which
mostly come from coal-fired power plants.
"Very extensive rules are being used that require us
to spend a lot of money and make a lot of retrofits in a
fairly short period of time," he said.
An Associated Press survey of 55 power producers
nationwide found that more "than 32 mostly coal-fired
power plants in a dozen states would retire because of
the regulation issued Wednesday and the previous rule
aimed at reducing pollution downwind from power
plants. One of those, Gibbs said, is the Welsh coal
power plant near Pittsburgh, Texas,: which is projected
to shutdown in December 2014. Its 44 employees would
be laid off.
In all, American Electric Power may have 600 layoffs
across 11 states due to both sets of new regulations,
Gibbs said.
Texas has filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the down-
wind EPA regulations. Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican
presidential candidate, often denounces the federal
agency as a job killer.
Allison Castle, a spokeswoman in Perry's state
office, said both Wednesday's regulations and those
from this summer were "a continuation of the Obama
Administration's assault on traditional American energy
sources and the good American jobs they support."
She said the latest round of regulations" I inevitably
result in power plant closures, increased costs of elec-
tricity, and reduced electricity reliability for American
businesses and families, with little to no direct benefit
to the environment."
Smith disagreed, saying the industry ha known for
two decades that mercury would eventually be regu-
lated.
"It's not worth retrofitting a 30- o 40-year-old facil-
ity," he said. "But most of them will make the retrofits
and continue to operate much more cleanly."
Gibbs, the AEP Texas official, said complying with the
new rules could mean idling so many plants >r repairs
that meeting the state's power needs may get tougher.
"This last summer, without any of these challenges,
we were barely able to keep the lights on here in Texas,"
he said. "So, if you're try ing to schedule a significant
ortion of your power plants to be down ... there could
# some real hiccups."
AAA Texas forecasts
7.5 million Texans will
travel 50 miles or more
from home during the
Year-End holidays, which
is a 2.6 percent increase
in total /ear-End travel
compared to 2010. The
11-dav Year-End holiday
trave period is the lon-
gest holiday travel season
of the year and is defined
as Friday, December 23,
2011 to Monday, .January
2, 2012.
"It's a positive sign for
the trave industry that
so many Texans are plan-
ning to travel this holiday
season," said AAA Texas
Vice President Branch
Operations, Rhonda
Wilson. "As our lives get
busier, it is so important
to create opportunities for
the rest and rejuvenation
that result from vacation
travel and connecting with
family and friends, espe-
cially during the holidays.
Working with a AAA Texas
Travel Agent can help
families maximize both
their travel budgets as well
as time spent with family
during the holidays."
Recent AAA travel sur-
veys show auto travel will
increase three percen
compared to 2010 and
remains the dominant
mode of transportation*
Approximately 6.9 million
Texans plan to drive to
their destination during
the Year-End holidays.
In other modes of trans-
portation;
• Nearly 364,000 Texans
will fly during the Year-
End holiday
• The remaining portion
of the travel population, or
234,000 Texans, will trav-
e by bus, train or cruise
ship.
The average distance
traveled by Texans during
the Year-End holidays is
expected to be 817 miles
round-trip.
AAA Texas offers the fol-
lowing tips for travelers:
• To decrease the like-
lihood of a break down,
AAA recommends motor-
ists have their vehicle ser-
viced regularly based on
the manufacturer's rec
ommended schedule and
identify a quality repair
shop Motorists can either
look for the AAA Approved
Auto Repair sign at local
auto repair facilities, or
search for a nearby AAA
Approved shop online at:
www.AAA.com / repair.
• Make sure you don't
miss out on nearby attrac-
tions during your road trip
and plan your gas station
stops to save money with
AAA's online TripTik at
www.AAA.com/TripTik or
use the free AAA TripTik
Mobile app available for
Android devices, iPhones
and iPads. Visit AAA.com
mobile. The app and Web
site provide updated gas
prices for thousan ds of sta-
tions around the U.S., and
also includes TourBook
information on locations
of attractions, events and
AAA Diainond-rated lodg-
ings and restaurants.
• AAA Members can
download free AAA eTour-
Book guides at AAA.com/
ebooks and sync them
to their smartphones or
ereader devices for on-
the-go use. Each new digi-
tal guidebook highlights a
top North American travel
destination with listings
for AAA Approved and
Diamond Rated hotels and
restaurants; AAA Editor's
Picks for attractions,
events and nightlife; and
other exclusive AAA travel
information.
As North America's
largest motoring and lei-
sure travel organization,
AAA provides more than
52 million members With
travel, insurance, financial
and automotive-related
services. Since its found-
ing in 1902, the not-for-
profit, fully tax-paying
AAA has been a leader an*
advocate for the safety and
security of all travelers.
AAA Texas can be visited
on the Internet at AAA.
com.
—TEXflS-r
LotterV
POWERBALL - 10-13-15
31-54 PB: 18 PP: 5
PICK 3 (Day)- 5-6-5
Daily 4 (Day) — 5-5-8-2
PICK 3 - 1-7-2
Daily 4 - 9-5-9-2
LOTTO TEXAS
<5-16-25-31-35-54
CASH FIVE
6 15 19 27 33
MIDDAY ON WALL STREET
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Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 341, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 22, 2011, newspaper, December 22, 2011; Sweetwater, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth229644/m1/3/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Sweetwater/Nolan County City-County Library.