From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A bicyclist is in serious condition after being struck and dragged by MetroRail in the Medical Center. The bicyclist was wearing headphones and riiding between platforms. The incident occurred Friday afternoon around 4:45pm. • A car crashed into the State Grille on Alabama after losing control of the vehicle and jumping a curb. The driver had to be cut out of his......

Good morning, Houston. 'Tis the season for strange missing persons reports: In Tyler, the latest individual to go missing is a 42-foot-tall snowman. The inflatable snowman was last seen at a Tyler tree farm Friday night; the tree lot's owner, Royce Wisenbaker, told the AP that he believes it was hoisted over a fence and carted away. The snowman is worth about $10,000, and a $1,000 reward has been posted for information leading to......

A tragic story continued unfolding this week in the case of Dennis Ray Driver Jr., the 8-month-old Houston boy who died late last year while asleep on his father's chest: The father, Dennis Driver, has been charged with murder in connection with the infant's death — and police say the boy died from taking cocaine. It happened Dec. 28, when Driver says he fell asleep with Dennis Jr. asleep on his chest; when Driver woke......

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......

Katherine Nadal, the woman accused of cutting her infant son's genitals off and blaming the mutilation on the family dog, made a court appearance yesterday — but police say they still don't have a motive in the case. Not much really happened during the hearing: Nadal, 25, in handcuffs and in tears, told state District Judge Denise Collins that she doesn't have a job and has no money to hire an attorney, so Collins said......

Good morning, Houston. Do you feel more metropolitan? Or bigger, maybe? According to estimates released by the Census Bureau yesterday, the influx of hurricane evacuees has made the Houston metro area the country's sixth largest. The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area now has an estimated 5,483,857 residents, which puts it ahead of Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach but still behind the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Philadelphia metro areas. Another population fact: Harris County......

More on the deaths of Leon and Maurine Roberson, the couple who were killed Oct. 18 when a speeding wrecker driver broadsided their car: Assistant Harris County DA Warren Diepraam says the wrecker driver, Sergio Gonzalez, had cocaine in his system at the time of the crash. Gonzalez hit the Robersons' car as they left church in the 11800 block of Wallisville Road; according to reports, Gonzalez was going 20 or 25 mph above the......

Last week we told you about the elementary school kid who got in trouble for bringing a grenade to school — but it turns out he wasn't the week's only pint-sized miscreant: At another Houston elementary school Friday, an 8-year-old was found carrying cocaine. Seems life is tough in Houston's third-grade hallways. Authorities believe the Scott Elementary student brought the cocaine from his house, where police arrested two people: Eladio Moreno, the kid's father, who......

Not everyone had a loving day yesterday. The Courier of Montgomery County is reporting narcotics officers found marijuana stuffed inside a heart-shaped candy box in a South Montgomery County home yesterday. Inside the box, officers found a note that read, "I thought I'd get you something you'd really like." Bianca, the Montgomery County Special Investigation Unit's drug dog, sniffed out the find, said Deputy Tom Thompson. "Bianca alerted on the door and ran straight......

Houstonist's grandmother once told us that certain unscrupulous people would stage automobile accidents to defraud insurance agencies out of money. So that's always been in the back of our mind — Grandma doesn't lie, after all – but we never heard of any real cases until we read the story of the 10 people who have been arrested in an elaborate staged-accident scheme. The group of suspects includes a doctor and two attorneys who helped......

You know what's fun? When someone ditches you during a smoke break. You know what's more fun? When law enforcement officials are sent out looking for that person because he was supposed to go to prison. Conroe-area police are looking for Carl Batiste, a 34-year-old Houston man who ditched his trial Tuesday before the jury found him guilty on Wednesday for possession and intent to distribute cocaine. The Courier is reporting he left his......

We've all heard about people using stolen identities to buy electronics, jewelry, whatever — but yesterday, a Houston man was arrested for appropriating another man's identity and using it to buy an entire beauty salon. William Cornell Robinson, 36, is accused of stealing the identity of a San Jacinto County man and using it to buy the Awesome Hair Salon this summer. According to the previous owner of the salon, who still works there, Robinson......

A robbery suspect led police on a two-hour chase today; it ended when the man crashed his pickup into a Pasadena waterway Eskico Truman Garner, a 75-year-old Texas City man, was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison today for trafficking in crack cocaine Also in Texas City, some residents of the apartment complex where an explosion occurred Wednesday still can't go home because of smoke damage and electrical outages And Curtis Jetton, injured......

Looks like HPD's crackdown of crime in and around southwest Houston apartment complexes is paying off — in the three weeks since the operation began, some number of people have been arrested and quite a bit of drugs has been seized. But thanks to local TV news, it's hard to tell just how many or how much. We do know that the sting targeted five apartment complexes on or near Fondren, Hillcroft and Gessner, plus......

San Francisco is proud host of a new reality show called "How to Get the Guy" that's unfortunately not a descendant of Will and Grace, Queer Eye, The L Word, American Idol etc. Also a biodefence lab is coming to the East Bay and SFist teaches wine pairing. Getting on the wrong train sucks. Getting on the wrong train and becoming the victim of what will later be described as a "stabbing spree" really sucks.......

From the "You've gotta give it to the man for trying" file comes the story of Oscar Martinez, who hid crack cocaine on top of a banana split during a traffic stop. A Richmond police officer pulled Martinez over Sunday night for a traffic violation on FM 1640, ran his information through the computer and found that Martinez had a suspended license and was wanted on an outstanding warrant. As the officer was arresting......

Attention druggies who attend Cy-Fair schools: Don't go out for the football team. Or the cheerleading squad, or the curling team, or chess ... heck, just avoid extracurricular activities altogether, because the Cy-Fair ISD is going to start random drug testing of students in extracurricular activities, thanks to a nearly $1 million federal grant. So everyone agrees that these tests are good, right? Um, well, not exactly. Supporters of the random testing say it will......

Two federal air marshals pleaded guilty yesterday to taking $15,000 to smuggle cocaine on a flight in December and agreed to cooperate with the government, which could mean other arrests are coming — though prosecutors said that might not be the case. According to the criminal complaint against the pair, Shawn Ray Nguyen and Burlie Sholar admitted to accepting the money in exchange for using their positions to sneak about 33 pounds of cocaine past......

Yesterday, four arrests were made in a large drug smuggling scheme. One of those arrests was in Houston, the other three in New York. This ring used tombstones featuring the likeness of the Virgin Mary to smuggle hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Mexico to the U.S. "Like grave robbers who have no respect for the dead, this drug organization used revered tombstones to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine into New York City,"......

In the event of a major hurricane, Galveston's seawall "would be a non-factor," Mississippi officials told the Galveston Chamber of Commerce yesterday Michael Brown, a Houston hand surgeon, has been barred from practicing medicine in Texas after testing positive for cocaine use Robbers held a babysitter and two teenage girls at gunpoint while they ransacked a northwest Harris County house last night Birds at every PetSmart store in Texas have been quarantined after a bird......

Andrea Yates will push for a plea deal that lets her serve time in a mental hospital, her lawyer said today Daniel N. DiNardo became the archbishop of Galveston-Houston today after Joseph Fiorenza retired because of age limits Gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman testified as a character witness today in the Max Soffar trial, saying the accused killer has "struggled with his demons and he's conquered them" In southwest Houston, a baby fell out of a......

From the "It's good to know we have this kind of people protecting us" file comes the story of two federal air marshals who seem pretty happy abusing their positions, if testimony from a Homeland Security agent is correct. Burlie L. Sholar III and Shawn Ray Nguyen are accused of conspiring with a cooperating witness to use their jobs to smuggle 33 pounds of cocaine aboard a plane from Houston to Las Vegas. They were......

Houstonist has the feeling things are getting bad for James Frey, the author of the gritty drug-rehab memoir A Million Little Pieces. It all started Sunday, when The Smoking Gun published a report indicating that a lot of Frey's claims in the book — from his cocaine-fueled binges to his role in a train wreck that supposedly killed his only friend as a teenager — aren't true. That led to reports that big-name Hollywood talent......

A man who inexplicably broke through barricades and drove through a closed construction site in northwest Harris County died when he ran into an oncoming construction truck Two Colombians were sentenced to prison for their part in a $25M weapons-for-cocaine deal that involved a Colombian terrorist militia and two Houston businessmen Houston Metro buses didn't join in the national transit tribute to Rosa Parks Thursday becuase the transit authority said it had already honored her......