Refinery accidents are kept as quiet as possible by the responsible party — especially when the responsible party is oil and gas giant BP. Two weeks before the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery in Texas City quietly released over 500,000 pounds of gases into the air via a tall flare used …
Drunk Driving Suspected in Fatal Dallas Crash
Drunk driving is suspected in last night’s devastating accident in Dallas, which killed two adults and critically injured an 8-year-old girl. Witnesses say a driver sped through a red light and plowed into 3 vehicles. One of the vehicles slammed into a utility pole, instantly killing two adults inside and ejecting the girl onto the street. It is unknown if …
Nursing Home Abuse: A Growing Problem
Elder abuse is a nationally recognized problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 500,000 older adults are abused or neglected in the United States every year. Sadly, it’s likely that many more occurrences of elder abuse that go unreported aren’t reflected in this statistic. The state of Texas has 1,376 nursing home facilities and 140,859 …
UT-Dallas Crane Collapse Kills Two Construction Workers
A construction accident occurred this weekend at the University of Texas-Dallas campus that involved a crane that collapsed and killed two workers. Workers were heard screaming while the incident occurred. The men who died were 58-year-old Thomas Fairbrother, Jr. and 50-year-old Terry Weaver. Their official cause of death is blunt force injuries. In the process of dismantling the crane, it …
“Watch for Motorcycles” Signs Posted around Dallas
Allstate Insurance Co. is putting up signs to alert drivers to motorcyclists in 25 metropolitan areas to try to stop crashes and save lives. There were almost 600 motorcycle related accidents in Dallas County in 2010, according to the Texas Department of Transportation, and 35% occurred at intersections. On average three motorcyclists are killed every day at U.S. intersections. Drivers …
Family Sues Applebee’s for Over-Serving Alcohol
In 2009, there was a tragic drunk driving car accident in which a North Texas child, Abdallah Khader, received brain injuries. The boy was 2-years-old at the accident and suffered damage to 80 percent of his brain after Stewart Lee Richardson hit his family’s car. Abdallah’s parents were also injured in the crash. The family of six-year-old Abdallah Khader sued …
Nursing Homes Make Heavy Use of Anti-Psychotic Drugs
A Boston Globe investigation recently showed that roughly 185,000 nursing home residents in the United States were given anti-psychotics in 2010 against federal nursing home regulators’ recommendations. These types of drugs are intended to treat severe mental illness like schizophrenia. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a medical alert about the fatal side effects of when dementia patients take …
Will the U.S. Ban Cell Phone Use While Driving?
The U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently recommended a federal law to ban talking or texting on a cell phone while driving. LaHood stated this at a distracted-driving summit in San Antonio. He thinks it is important for the police to be able to write tickets when people are foolishly using their phones while driving. Last year there were 3,000 US …
Texas Nursing Home Employees Fired After Reporting Abuse
Two nurse assistants at Bandera Road’s Princeton Place nursing home in San Antonio were fired after reporting abuse of elderly patients. The nurses reported that some patients had unusual and excessive bruising in the shape of finger imprints, and also had torn skin on their faces. There are 134 patients at the nursing home, and the employees wondered if there …
Child Killed in Drunk Driving Accident
A 7-year-old boy was standing on a porch in southwest Houston when a car driven by an alleged drunk driver slammed into the porch and killed the child. The driver, who is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, is now being charged with intoxicated manslaughter and is being held without bond. The driver lost control of his Ford Crown Victoria, jumped …
