A few awful items and weird crime tidbits from the Texas Gulf Coast...
A Brownsville jury convicted 27-year-old Juan Luis Sanchez on ten counts of possession of child pornography. Sanchez's predilection was discovered not through diligent Web sleuthing on the part of the authorities, but rather because Sanchez, evidently no MENSA member, decided back in March of last year to surf kiddy porn on of the computers at the Brownsville Public Library. After patrons tipped off the cops, he was discovered to have more kiddy porn on his personal computer. In a plea deal, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison, which hardly seems long enough for one so stupid to even come to terms with his own idiocy, much less atone for his crimes.
While we're still on the Valley pedophile beat, we'll close the book on Andres Enrique Cantu, who attracted national attention at Christmastime in 2008 when his unidentified elementary-school-aged relative wrote a letter to Santa asking that He get Cantu to stop molesting her and her sister for Christmas. (It is believed that complaints to her mother had gone unanswered.) A teacher at Cesar Chavez Elementary in Pharr turned the letter over to the police, and Cantu was arrested and convicted last month on two counts of continuous sex abuse of a child. He was sentenced to two concurrent 50 year-sentences.
Also in Pharr, a teacher in that school's middle school faces a state jail felony charge of unlawful restraint of a child, with a potential penalty of two year in jail and a $10,000 fine. The teacher, 25-year-old Jose Manuel Martinez, allegedly zip-tied an 11-year-old student to a chair after the kid allegedly used vulgar language, threatened to run from class, refused to do his assignments and punched the wall, all while he was already in in-school suspension on December 11.
The boy's mother says the poor dear was having trouble breathing, but a third party who witnessed the incident seemed to imply that he had it coming, and the commenters on the Brownsville Herald's Web site mostly agreed, saying the boy is probably "chiflado." (That's an antiquated word for "crazy," Hair Balls has learned. The Three Stooges were Los Tres Chiflados en Espanol, we also were taught.)
Down in Victoria, we found this account of someone literally flipping out...Last month, two staffers of a Victoria hospital went to the home of 21-year-old Robert Paul Bower to evaluate his mental health. Here is the rest of the story, courtesy of the Victoria Advocate's police blotter:
"As the two women went outside the house to make calls, Bower began to do flips and summersaults in the front yard. He then grabbed an axe and began striking and chopping items. The 21-year-old then charged toward the two women with the axe, who at that point had retreated to their vehicle. Bower began to hit the roof and passenger door. He then turned back around and gave the axe to his grandfather. Bower continued back to the front yard and began to do some more flips. Police took him into custody following the incident, according to the arrest report."
Bower was charged with either suspicion of aggravated assault or being crazy as a shithouse rat, we forget which.
