News You Ought to Know!
Tornado slams Dallas; 4 killed in Arkansas, Oklahoma
By JAMIE STENGLE and JAKE BLEIBERG
DALLAS (AP) — A tornado tossed trees into homes, tore off storefronts and downed power lines but killed no one in a densely populated area of Dallas, leaving Mayor Eric Johnson to declare the city “very fortunate” to be assessing only property damage.
A meteorologist said Monday that people took shelter thanks to early alerts, and that it was fortunate the tornado struck Sunday evening, when many people were home.
“Anytime you have a tornado in a major metropolitan area, the potential for large loss of life is always there,” said Patrick Marsh, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. “We were very fortunate that the tornado did not hit the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium or the State Fair, where you would have had a lot of people that were exposed.”
The tornado crossed over two major interstates. “If that happened at rush hour, I think we’d be talking about a different story,” he said.
The National Weather Service said the tornado that ripped through north Dallas was an EF3, which has a maximum wind speed of 140 mph (225 kph). The agency said another tornado in the suburb of Rowlett was EF1, with maximum wind speeds of 100 mph (160 kph).
DFR Response to October 20th Storms
Dallas: Dallas Fire-Rescue along with other departments in the City of Dallas are in the process of assessing damage from the radar-confirmed tornado that struck Northwest Dallas, on Sunday, October 20th, at approximately 9:00 p.m.
Initial responses included everything from power lines down, to fallen trees to people being injured inside of their homes by broken glass. Most of the damage is limited to the area bordered, from North to South, by Royal Lane to Northwest Highway; and East to West, by Interstate 75 and Harry Hines Boulevard. As it currently stands, there have been no reports of any fatalities or serious injuries, and only three people have been taken to local hospitals for evaluation of non-life-threatening injuries.
Search teams worked, for approximately 6 hours, conducting primary assessments on all the structures they could access. Unfortunately search efforts were hampered by limited access and lack of proper lighting. A second set of teams will resume search efforts when daylight provides the needed visibility.
Among the many structures which sustained damage from the storm, DFR fire station 41 was left uninhabitable after the roof, and other parts of the structure, was mostly removed by the high winds. Despite the amount of damage however, none of the firefighters inside were injured.
Amber Guyger’s new attornery files for an appeal in her murder conviction sentencing of ten years in prison
DALLAS – Amber Guyger’s new attorney filed an appeal for her conviction and sentencing of murdering Botham Jean in his home.
It is not unusual for a notice of appeal to be filed when there was not plea bargain accepted during the trail.
Although, the filing does not mean Guyger will continue the appeals process.
Trump likens House impeachment inquiry to ‘a lynching’
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and JAY REEVES
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stirring up painful memories of America’s racist past, President Donald Trump on Tuesday compared the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry to a lynching, a practice once widespread across the South in which angry mobs killed thousands of black people.
Trump has spent recent days pressuring Republicans to give him stronger support in countering the impeachment investigation.
His tweeted suggestion that they “remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching” came a day after Trump said the GOP needs to “get tougher and fight” against the fast-moving inquiry into whether he tried to withhold U.S. military aid until Ukraine’s government agreed to investigate Democrat Joe Biden and his son.
Trump, who has been complaining about unfairness in the impeachment process being led by House Democrats began his tweet: “So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights.”
Fighting back Tuesday night, Trump’s reelection campaign tweeted out a 1998 video of then-Sen. Biden talking about President Bill Clinton’s impending impeachment and saying, in part, “History is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching.”
Earlier in the day, Biden referred to Trump’s lynching comparison as “abhorrent” and “despicable.” His Democratic presidential campaign declined to comment on his 1998 statements.
The reference to a lynching struck a deep, painful chord for black people whose relatives died in racially motivated killings.
Malinda Edwards, whose father was forced to jump off an Alabama river bridge in 1957 by Klansmen who heard that he had smiled at a white woman, said Trump was making light of the horror experienced by victims.
“Either he’s very ignorant or very insensitive or very racist and just doesn’t care,” Edwards, 66, of Dayton, Ohio, said of the president. Her father’s name is now among those on a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, honoring more than 4,000 lynching victims.
Janet Langhart Cohen told The Associated Press that Trump is among too many white people who have disrespected lynching victims and their descendants. Her distant cousin Jimmy Gillenwaters was lynched in Kentucky in the early 1900s.
Trump “knows what he’s doing. He knows how to hurt and divide,” said Cohen, the wife of former Republican Sen. William Cohen of Maine.
Bernice King, a daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., tweeted that Trump’s comparison “is a reflection of the very real trajectory of our nation and the very repugnant evil of racism, which still permeates both legislation and language in the United States.”
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a black Republican, went a step further by tweeting a graphic black-and-white photo of a black man hanging from a tree and said: “This is a lynching. Trump this is not happening to you and it’s pathetic that you act like you’re such a victim.”
Trump’s closest Republican backers in Congress agreed with him, though others rejected his comparison.
“This is a lynching in every sense,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is close to Trump.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., criticized Trump’s “unfortunate choice of words,” saying it’s better to describe the impeachment process as “unfair.”
Democrats expressed outrage that Trump would equate impeachment to a lynching and called on him to delete the tweet or apologize.
Separately Tuesday, a U.S. appeals court in Atlanta was considering whether federal judges can order grand jury records unsealed in the mob lynching of two black couples . The young black sharecroppers were stopped along a rural road in 1946 by a white mob that dragged them out and shot them multiple times east of Atlanta. More than 100 people reportedly testified before a grand jury, but no one was ever indicted in the deaths of Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey.
