Houston-area mom on trial over 4-year-old daughter's death, TX

By Associated Press
6:12 AM CDT, June 30, 2010
HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors say a Houston-area nurse on trial for failing to prevent the death of her 4-year-old daughter lied to doctors and investigators about a boyfriend now accused of raping the girl.

But an attorney for Abigail Young of Spring told jurors that the woman had her daughter tested for leukemia when she noticed her frequent bruising and consulted doctors.

The child -- Emma Thompson -- died last year after suffering from a severed pancreas and fractured skull. Prosecutors yesterday displayed autopsy photos of Emma's injuries.

Texas Child Protective Services revamped its investigations into alleged sexual abuse after the death. Investigators say the girl had genital herpes.

Young could face up to life in prison if convicted of injury to child by omission.

Her boyfriend at the time, Lucas Coe, faces trial in September on charges of aggravated sexual assault.



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Recovery Effort in Gulf Expected to Continue Despite Storm

By JOSEPH BERGER

A tropical storm moving across the western Gulf of Mexico that is likely to strengthen into a hurricane is not expected to seriously disrupt efforts to capture oil gushing from the stricken BP well, officials of the Coast Guard and BP said Monday.

Adm. Thad W. Allen, of the Coast Guard, who is commanding the federal response to the disaster, said at an afternoon press conference that high seas produced by Tropical Storm Alex should not force the evacuation of rigs and other equipment from the blowout site, which is 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Should an evacuation take place, he said, it could halt the work of collecting oil and drill relief wells for about 14 days.

“As it stands right now, absent the intervention of a hurricane, we’re still looking at mid-August," to have relief wells shut off the gusher entirely, Admiral Allen said.

However, BP officials said that what could be delayed, even by current wave heights, is an effort to prepare what is known as a “floating riser system” that will help raise the daily total of collected oil from, about 25,000 barrels to as much as 50,000 barrels. At a briefing Monday morning, Kent Wells, a senior vice president of BP who is overseeing BP’s efforts, said the storm is expected to follow a track that will take it well west of the blowout site, but it may produce waves of 10 to 12 feet, which Mr. Wells said was too high for the “very precise work” on the surface needed to prepare the floating riser system.

Mr. Wells said the containment cap and a second system that are collecting 25,000 barrels of oil a day would not need to be disconnected and the drilling of two relief wells should continue on schedule. The first relief well is supposed to pump in heavy mud and shut off the gusher sometime in August.

Tropical Storm Alex is on a course heading for northeastern Mexico and a stretch of Texas. Meteorologists at Accuweather.com said they are anticipating a landfall between Tampico, Mexico and Brownsville, Tex. Wednesday night or early Thursday.

Meanwhile Associated Press reported that BP had filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission that indicate the cost of capping and cleaning the spill have reached $2.65 billion. BP has lost more than $100 billion in market value since the drilling platform the company was operating blew up April 20. The costs include spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs, but not a $20 billion fund for damages the company created this month.

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Alex may effect Gulf oil production ..

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Tropical Storm Alex, expected to become a hurricane Tuesday, seems to be headed on a path away from the bulk of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production and refining infrastructure. But some production impact will be felt as one of the largest energy producers in the Gulf said Monday it was shutting down several platforms as a precaution.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) said it had pulled 700 workers from its Gulf operations, and some 835 workers remained offshore. The company is shutting in production from its Western and Central Gulf of Mexico assets to prepare for the potential full evacuation of personnel Tuesday. The company started pulling workers from the Gulf over the weekend. The company didn't specify how much production would be shut or how many platforms were being evacuated.

At 11 a.m. EDT, Alex was located about 85 miles west-northwest of Campeche, Mexico, in the western Gulf of Mexico, and was heading towards southern Texas and northern Mexico. Most U.S. offshore oil and gas platforms are located in the eastern part of the Gulf, far from Alex's forecast path.

Alex "is not likely to have a major impact on production or refining in the U.S.," Doug MacIntyre, senior analyst at the Energy Information Administration, told Dow Jones Newswires Monday. "Alex's current path appears to avoid most of the oil and gas production platforms and any of the major refining centers."

Energy markets Monday seemed to take the storm in stride. Light, sweet crude for August delivery ended 61 cents lower at $78.25 a barrel a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Natural gas for July delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled 2.96% lower at $4.717 million British thermal units.

Gulf producers Apache Corp. (APA), Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) also said Monday they have started evacuating non-essential workers from the offshore facilities expected to be in the path of the storm but none have so far reported any impact to their production.

BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) said Monday it pulled non-essential personnel from three offshore facilities in the the Gulf, and that production was not affected. The company evacuated workers from Atlantis, Mad Dog and Holstein platforms.

Alex may delay BP PLC's plans to increase the amount of oil collected from a leaking well in the Gulf by a week, a company official said Monday.

While the storm's winds are expected to stay far to the west of the Deepwater Horizon spill, high seas are likely to become an issue this week, said Kent Wells, a senior vice president with BP, in a press briefing. Waves up to between 10 feet and 12 feet would prevent BP from hooking a third rig up to an underwater containment system, a process that needs three days of good weather, Wells said.

Two rigs, the Discoverer Enterprise and Q4000, are already collecting between 20,000 and 25,000 barrels of oil a day from the well, which has gushed ever since a rig working at the site caught fire and sank in April.

Chevron Corp. (CVX) and ConocoPhillips (COP) said that they have not evacuated workers, but that they are closely monitoring the forecast for Alex.

A hurricane watch was issued for parts of the south Texas Gulf coastline area and parts of northern Mexico, the National Hurricane Center reported Monday on its website.

The NHC, in its advisory, also said Alex likely will become a hurricane Tuesday and has increased in strength, now with winds of 60 miles per hour.

The watch area for the U.S. extends from south of Baffin Bay to the mouth of the Rio Grande in Texas, with Mexico issuing a hurricane watch from the Rio Grande to La Cruz.


-By Isabel Ordonez, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9207; isabel.ordonez@dowjones.com

(Brian Baskin and Angel Gonzalez contributed to this article

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Breaking: Houston women drowns in tub/3-year old present.

by khou.com staff
khou.com
Posted on June 22, 2010 at 7:36 AM
Updated today at 9:08 AM
HOUSTON – Police are investigating after relatives found a woman dead in her bathtub Monday evening. A 3-year-old child was also alone inside the home.
Police said around 7 p.m., worried relatives went to the home located on Briar Seasons at Winter Park in southwest Houston after not hearing from the woman. They found the little girl alone with her mom's body and called 911.
Police said the house was secured from the inside and there were no signs of forced entry. They said the woman appeared to have drowned, but the official cause of death is pending an autopsy.

A woman was apparently sexually assaulted and beaten to death Friday inside her apartment while her son slept in another room, Houston police said.

The woman identified as Bridgette Jones was found lying on the living room floor in an apartment at the Luxor Park complex in the 5800 block of West Sunforest in northwest Houston about 8 a.m., police said.

She had been beaten in the head.
Jones' 10-year-old son was asleep in his bedroom at the time of the slaying. He was not hurt and is now with relatives.
Police said there were no signs of forced entry, leading investigators to believe Jones may have known her attacker. Officials said a large-screen television and Jones' white Mazda 626 four-door car were missing.

A passer-by found Jones' body, after seeing the door ajar at the first-floor apartment.
Police are looking for a man they said is a person of interest in the slaying, but they declined to identify him or disclose his possible relationship to Jones. The also are searching for Jones' missing car, which has Texas license plate FGR 230.

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Man falls in open manhole in NW Houston

A man walking across a busy northwest Houston street stepped into an open manhole and fell 10 feet Tuesday afternoon, according to the Houston Fire Department.

Emergency responders placed the man in neck and back braces as a precaution and transferred him to Memorial Hermann after hoisting him out of the opening, according to Asst. Fire Chief Kevin Alexander.

Private contractors were cleaning and examining city sewer lines with a remote controlled camera from a van next to the manhole at Northwood and North Main when the man walked past two employees, three safety cones and a loud generator and into the hole, according to Parrish Anderson of Cleanserve.

“He walked straight into the hole,” said Anderson, who was outside the van and described the man as disoriented and stumbling before the incident.
The open manhole was not in the crosswalk and a few feet within the intersection.

After the fall, the man was moving around but unresponsive according to Anderson, who tried to talk to him while a co-worker called 911.

The man, whose identity officials are not releasing, was conscious and alert throughout the rescue and did not appear to be under the influence of any substance, according to Alexander.


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