Month: September 2010

United States Attorney John E. Murphy announced that in El Paso Friday morning, 53-year-old Patrick Woods, former member of the Board of Directors for the National Center for the Employment of the Disabled (NCED), pleaded guilty to embezzlement in connection with the El Paso corruption investigation. Appearing before United States District Judge Frank Montalvo, Woods

Hey guys, take your time. One of the trapped Chilean miners is in no rush to be rescued — because both his wife and his longtime mistress will be waiting for him when he finally sees the light of day, according to a New York Post report. Neither woman was aware of the other’s existence

An MRI revealed that UTEP senior running back Donald Buckram has a bruised knee but no ligament damage, according to UTEP officials. Buckram injured his knee during practice on Wednesday. Whether or not he plays Saturday against Arkansas Pine Bluff at the Sun Bowl will be a game-time decision. Buckram is UTEP’s ninth-leading all-time rusher

April Gomez knows east El Paso traffic gridlock can be enough to make someone just wanna stay home. “It’s pretty bad,” she told ABC-7 as she pulled up to a department store off Zaragoza. “And it gets really bad on Fridays.” Three heavily-trafficked eastside spots landed on this year’s list of the Texas Department of

ABC-7 stories about the ongoing public corruption investigation: Judge dismisses some charges against Luther Jones, Gilbert Sanchez (October 2009) Contractor indicted in public corruption case (September 2009) Emotional Bob Jones enters guilty plea in corruption case(July 2009) District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez, attorney Luther Jones indicted (June 2009) Mena pleads guilty, apologizes to community (February 2009)

Jim Ward, frontman for local band Sleepercar and proud proponent of El Paso, is asking the public’s help in locating a trailer with the band’s equipment that was recently stolen. “Our trailer was stolen in San Antonio Saturday morning and we lost a huge amount of gear,” Ward wrote on sleepercarmusic.com. “Would everyone please keep

A former UTEP basketball star will be back on the Don Haskins Center floor this season – this time, as an undergraduate assistant coach on coach Tim Floyd’s staff. Greg Foster, the 6-foot-11 center who played for UTEP in the 1980s, has spent years trying to break into the college coaching ranks and is now

In order to meet County of El Paso budget demands, Commissioner’s Court approved three furlough days today for all County employees for next fiscal year. In addition, the County Judge’s salary was cut from about $98,000 per year to $74,000 per year. Some commissioners also had their salaries sliced by more than $3,000. After a

Nearly a dozen prominent El Pasoans face felony indictments following a six-year federal investigation into allegedly pervasive corruption throughout local government. The charges are based on the federal government’s Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) law. The allegedly corrupt organization in the case was Access HealthSource, a health insurer that did business with El Paso County,

Court Documents Detail His Descent into Isolation and Despair By RUSSELL GOLDMAN, LEE FERRAN, PIERRE THOMAS and JASON RYAN / ABCNews Sept. 2, 2010? James Lee, the bomb-laden gunman who was killed by police in the lobby of the Discovery Channel, was once convicted and imprisoned for smuggling illegal immigrants into the country from Mexico.

These are the parties and their descriptions in the order they were presented in the federal indictment that came down Tuesday and was unsealed on Thursday. -FRANK APODACA, officer of Access; became COO of Precis. -MARC SCHWARTZ, consultant for NCED and Access. -LUTHER JONES, attorney. “Recruited and assisted candidates for elected office in the City,

The 11 El Pasoans who turned themselves in to the FBI on Thursday morning were indicted this week on federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations charges. The case centers around Access HealthSource and its contracts with El Paso County and three school districts from 1998-2007. The school districts were El Paso Independent School District, Ysleta

Setting the record straight. In an ad campaign, Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Susana Martinez said, ?Baby Brianna was five months old when she died. She had many broken bones, bite marks, and she was beat to death. So we went to the Legislature and fought for three years to make it a life sentence, and we

Las Cruces Crime Stoppers is offering up to $1,000 for information that leads to the arrest of the three suspects who assaulted a 79-year-old good Samaritan with a knife and then took his Boston bulldog. Las Cruces Police learned that just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 31, the 79-year-old man was near the MMJ

The owners of local bar Hope and Anchor took it upon themselves to try and help answer how El Pasoans can help Juarez. In order to inform and develop the up-and-coming generation of local non-profit donors, Hope and Anchor owners hosted an info session on behalf of the Friends of FEMAP International group on Wednesday.

Two new cases of West Nile virus – the third and fourth overall cases this year – have been identified in El Paso County. The third patient is a 34-year-old female who resides in the 79849 zip code. The fourth is a 78-year-old female who resides within the 79936 zip code. The El Paso Dept.

An endless war that changed from one deployment to the next. That’s how Ashton Butler described his time in Iraq. Butler served two tours of duty in Iraq and said the second was dramatically different than the first. “(It’s) a war that we could never win,” Butler said. Butler said he felt helpless, struggling to

A Lower Valley man was charged with DWI and abandoning or endangering a child early Tuesday morning after a family fight. El Paso Police said that Tony Yslas, 25, of the 9000 block of Betel, was involved in an argument when he grabbed his 8-month-old child from the child’s mother, got in a car and

With the formal end of combat operations in Iraq now in effect, soldiers are returning to the states in droves. Many of them are trying to adjust to a life that doesn’t involve IEDs, assault weapons, extreme conditions and violence. While Fort Bliss offers services to help soldiers adjust to civilian life, there has been

A 17-year-old man wanted in connection with family violence incidents tried to turn himself in to authorities on Monday but eventually walked away when no one was there to book him. Vincent Escobar walked into the El Paso County Detention Facility Downtown at 6:30 p.m. Monday and offered to turn himself in after seeing himself

UTEP has finalized its 2010-11 men’s basketball non-conference schedule. “Coach Floyd and the administrative staff at UTEP have done a great job of putting together their non-conference schedule,” said Conference USA Associate Commissioner for Sports Services Chris Woolard. “They were very strategic in the process of building a schedule that will give UTEP a strong

As President Barack Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office, declaring an end to combat operations in Iraq, Janie Minjares clutched a handkerchief in her El Paso home. When Obama spoke with her at Fort Bliss earlier in the day, she started crying when he asked about her husband, Gilbert Minjares Jr., who gave