From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • Ashley Benton, the 17 year old accused of murdering a 15 year old, has agreed to a plea bargain and will avoid prison time. • Former President George Bush's favorite BBQ joint, Otto's on Memorial is going to be razed to make way for new construction. There is no current date for the demise of Otto's, so go grab a Bush plate......

At Chuck E Cheese, a kid can be a kid. Not so, however, in Harris County, where we prosecute more teens as adults than do four other heavily populated Texas counties....combined. Judges and prosecutors think we can expect the number of teens in prison to increase in the coming years as well, since recent sex scandals at the Texas Youth Commission (the juvenile hall end of the law) have led to a new rule where......

Good morning, Houston. If you're looking forward to Earthquest, the $600 million-plus, 250-acre theme park being planned for east Montgomery County, you should be happy to know that the park plan has gotten a boost: Earlier this month, Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation to enable tax incentives for the project. The park, to be built on Caney Creek near Highway 59 and FM 1485 in New Caney, is the brainchild of paleontologist Don Lessem,......

A little more information today on the plea deal that Ashley Benton's attorneys turned down this week: According to the Chronicle, the deal would have resulted in no prison time for Benton in exchange for a murder plea: Schaffer said the first offer from prosecutors included 10 years of deferred adjudication for the 17-year-old, a form of probation where defendants avoid conviction if they complete the terms. He said Benton's camp is hoping for a......

Lawyers on both sides of the Ashley Benton murder trial are in court this morning for a hearing in which prosecutors were expected to say whether the intend to retry Benton on the original murder charge, try her on a lesser charge or drop charges altogether — or, perhaps, to accept a plea counteroffer from Benton's attorneys. Lawyers for Benton, who is accused of murder in the stabbing death of gang member Gabriel Granillo at......

After jurors deliberated for 17 and a half hours on the fate of Ashley Benton, the 17-year-old charged with the murder of a fellow teen during a gang fight last summer, we found out what'll happen to Benton — or rather, we didn't. Noting that the jury had been deadlocked for six hours, state District Judge Devon Anderson declared a mistrial Friday. Brian Wice, a member of Benton's defense team, said one juror had voted......

Jurors today are continuing to deliberate over the fate of Ashley Benton, the 17-year-old girl accused of murdering an MS-13 gang member during a gang fight at a Montrose-area last last summer. Jurors got the case yesterday after closing arguments during which prosecutors and defense attorneys again brought out baseball bats and knives, some of the weapons used in the fight, and summed up seven days' worth of evidence from the trial. "Gabriel Granillo has......

Ashley Benton took the stand in her own defense during her murder trial yesterday, testifying that she didn't mean to hurt anyone when she went with friends to a gang "rumble" at Chew Park last summer, but doing nothing to explain discrepancies in her statements to police. "It was a bad decision on my part," Benton, 17, said of buying the $8 knife she used to kill 14-year-old gang member Gabriel Granillo during the June......

Testimony from a series of gang members continued Monday in the trial of Ashley Benton, the teenage girl accused of stabbing another teen to death during a gang fight at Chew Park last summer — but this time, a member of the gang with which Benton was reportedly associated testified for the prosecution, saying that he hoped doing so would protect him from retribution from MS-13, the rival gang. The Crazy Crew member, who calls......

Good morning, Houston. So, did you hear about the calf that ran loose along the Gulf Freeway feeder road near Clear Lake City Boulevard yesterday? As if there aren't enough things causing traffic on our freeways, you know? The calf apparently got loose through a hole in a fence, and it wandered along the feeder for nearly an hour and a half, eluding its would-be captors until it slipped back through the hole where......

The first gang member testified yesterday in the trial of Ashley Benton, the 17-year-old girl accused of stabbing 15-year-old Gabriel Granillo to death last summer during a gang fight at Chew Park — and he told jurors that Granillo wasn't trying to run away from the fight, as prosecutors had said during opening arguments Monday. The witness — a 20-year-old members of Southwest Locos Salvatrucha, a Houston subset of the MS-13 gang, who calls himself......

Jurors heard opening arguments yesterday in the murder trial of Ashley Benton, the girl accused of stabbing a 14-year-old gang member to death at Chew Park near Montrose last summer. Benton — who was 16 at the time — was involved with the Crazy Crew gang, members of which got into a fight with members of MS-13, the gang with which Granillo was affiliated. Benton's defense attorneys told jurors Monday that she stabbed Granillo in......