Man guns down fellow metro bus rider...because he bumped into him

[Catherine Vincent]

Unbelievable. :(

http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou070328_jj_Metrobusshooting.d3f07cb.html

Suspect in Metro bus shooting charged with murder UPDATED

01:37 PM CDT on Thursday, March 29, 2007

By Jason Whitely / 11 News

Man shot, killed on Metro bus

The man accused of gunning down a fellow Metro bus rider was charged with murder Thursday. City bus riders heading in to Houston witnessed the unthinkable Wednesday. “We saw this big light and this big pop," Gwen Guidry said. "My ears are still ringing." She’s a nurse who was on her way to work at Methodist Hospital.

Police said they think Garrett Mallot, who had just boarded, gunned down a fellow rider. His bond was set at $50,000.

Garrett Mallot was taken into custody at the scene.
“The suspect was making his way through the center aisle when he brushed up against the victim,” said Capt. Dwayne Ready with the Houston Police Department. “The guy bumped him,” said Effrom Mooring, who was on the bus. “They exchanged words. The guy pulled out a gun and shot him. Just for bumping him.” The victim, who was shot once in the chest, was an older African-American man.

[stillcool]

1. There's some scary shit..

going on in Texas....and on DU. Smoke'em if you got'em.
http://www.texasobserver.org/pdfs/TYC_version_1.pdf
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2455
New Evidence of Altered Documents in TYC Coverup
March 12th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

A disciplinary report confirming misconduct by former West Texas State School Assistant Superintendent Ray Brookins was altered with the apparent approval of Texas Youth Commission Inspector General Ray Worsham shortly after Brookins was given a promotion, documents obtained by the Observer show. Worsham was suspended with pay last week after allegations surfaced that he may have been responsible for altering a key internal review of the agency’s handling of the crisis at Pyote. New, unreleased documents show that Worsham may have been covering for Brookins much earlier.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28youth.html?ex=13...

Texan Calls for Takeover of State’s Juvenile Schools
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: February 28, 2007

AUSTIN, Tex., Feb. 27 — A long-simmering scandal over sexual abuse of juveniles at schools for youthful offenders broke into the open on Tuesday with an outraged state senator calling for a takeover of the troubled Texas Youth Commission.
Erich Schlegel for The New York Times


At a school in West Texas, a youth commission official acknowledged at a hearing of the State Senate Criminal Justice Committee, the school’s superintendent was aware that two supervisors routinely awakened boys for late-night encounters behind closed doors in deserted offices.

The two supervisors — one of whom had been transferred from another state school after pornography was found on his work computer — were allowed to resign in 2005 without charges. One became the principal of a charter school in Midland, Tex., state officials said. The superintendent was promoted to director of juvenile corrections, a post he still holds, the youth commission confirmed.


State Senator Juan Hinojosa, Democrat of McAllen, who investigated conditions at another school in his South Texas district in 2005, said, “We found out a lot of youths are kept seven or eight months longer than required, and we want to know why.”

Mr. Hinojosa added: “If a young person refuses to have sex with a supervisor, they deduct a point and are required to stay longer.”

At another state school in Brownwood in Central Texas, he said, “A supervisor was accused of having sex with a 15-year-old juvenile” — a girl, he said later. It was turned over to the Brownwood police, he said, “with no action — it was covered up.”


Senators questioned Mr. Nichols about the transfer in 2003 of one supervisor, Ray Brookins, to the West Texas State School from another school for juvenile offenders at San Saba, after pornography had been found on his computer. Mr. Brookins later became assistant superintendent at Pyote and was cited by the Texas Rangers for sexual contact with juveniles there, senators said.

Another supervisor at Pyote, John Paul Hernandez, was also reported by the Texas Rangers to have engaged in sexual contact with students, senators said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The superintendent at Pyote, Chip Harrison, who knew of the accusations against Mr. Brookins and Mr. Hernandez and kept them on the staff, senators said, is now director of juvenile corrections for the commission, in charge of several schools.


To some in Paris, sinister past is back
In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.'
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 12, 2007
PARIS, Texas -- The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place.

There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.
----------------------------------------------------There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.

The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.

"All Shaquanda did was grab somebody and she will be in jail for 5 or 6 years?" said Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who is president of the state NAACP branch. "It's like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703...