• A Fort Bend County student has been accused of bringing a 9mm gun to school. The student was immediately expelled. • Two teens have been arrested after carjacking a family from their Cadillac Escalade at First Colony Mall. • Authorities are looking for a man claiming to be a police officer who attacked a 15 year old girl at a park in the 6400 block of Rustling Elms Drive back on November 18th.......

• The woman who left her six children home alone while she ran off to Africa to meet a man she met on the internet is headed back home. Shanell Monique Mosley has been charged with child endangerment and abandonment and authorities will be waiting for her when she arrives. • A man who backed up into an HPD car during a car chase last night after a traffic stop got away by fleeing......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • The parents of missing Rice student, Matthew Wilson have added $10,000 of their own money to the reward for information leading to his whereabouts. The total reward amount is now $25,000. This includes $5000 from Crime Stoppers and $10,000 from Rice University. If you have information, please contact Crime Stoppers at 713.222.TIPS • A man was ejected from his car and killed......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • Recent Katy Freeway closures are sure to cause a few headaches. As of 10 p.m., Friday night, the Katy Freeway eastbound ramp to Beltway 8 northbound will be closed until April 2008. The westbound ramp to Beltway 8 northbound will be closed until August 2008. • Three Houston area residents have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for breach of contract because they......

Good morning, Houston. In case you haven't noticed, it's finally hot. We've had temperatures in the high 90s so far this week, and coupled with high humidity, they're making it dangerously warm — so much so, in fact, that we were under a heat advisory yesterday. And it looks like today's temperatures will be about the same, so remember to avoid heat exhaustion by drinking plenty of fluids, avoiding strenuous outdoor activities in the......

Good morning, Houston. Sure, we've had a lot of rain, but there haven't been any hurricane scares yet — so it's pretty easy to overlook the fact that we're headed into the peak of the 2007 hurricane season. Not that easy, though: The Chronicle's Eric Berger reminds us that there's still some storm activity in the Atlantic, including a system 650 miles east about 650 miles east of the southern Windward Islands that could......

Ah, how we love news of stupid criminals — but there's been woefully little of it lately. So thank goodness for the guy who broke into a jukebox early this morning, but didn't realize it was free and therefore contained no money at all. It happened on West Road near the North Freeway at around 1:30 a.m., when someone smashed a glass door of a restaurant and went to the jukebox inside, apparently planning to......

Two local pharmacies were burglarized last night. The first was Cunningham pharmacy on Airline near near Ellena Road were investigators say at least 3 people pryed the doors open. The bandits took off with codeine syrup and cash. Their next target was Champions pharmacy just down Airline, where the burglars broke into the vacant space next door to the pharmacy and then broke through the wall. A logical move when you are high on codeine......

Good morning, Houston. Are you feeling particularly crunk today? Maybe you should be: Crunk is among the words added to Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary this year. Also among the 100 new words are DVR, IED, gray literature and smackdown. But we think we'll get the most use out of crunk, which M-W defines as a style of Southern rap music but which has a variety of definitions in the Urban Dictionary. Which brings us to......

We've covered a few distinctive thieves in the last few months: the cell phone bandit, the bicycle bandit, the dapper bandit, the bad hair bandit — and now there's a new one: the bossy bandit, who was reportedly quite rude when he knocked over a west Houston bank last week. According to FBI officials, the man walked into the Wells Fargo branch on the Katy Freeway near Highway 6 at around 5 p.m. last Tuesday;......

Houston now has a "cell phone bandit" bank robber on the lose. Well, that's what authorities are calling her at least. A woman casually walked into the Wells Fargo off the North Freeway, wearing a red wig, and talking on her cell phone as she walked up to the teller and handed her a note demanding money. There's no word of a gun being present at the time. The robber continued her conversation as the......

Remember Pedro Espinoza-Escama, the man who police charged with helping his girlfriend sell her two teenage daughters into prostitution? Well, if you happen to run into him on the street, you really should call HPD: It seems someone accidentally released Espinoza-Escama from a city jail early Friday morning. Oops! According to police, 21-year-old Espinoza-Escama and his girlfriend, 35-year-old Nelsi Yolanda Latuda, forced Latuda's 14- and 16-year-old daughters into prostitution, and Latuda even passed out business......

Police are still trying to piece together the events that led to a shooting on the East Loop yesterday morning, possibly the result of a case of road rage. The victim was 47-year-old Carlos Berdegues, who was found slumped over in his truck after the vehicle crashed into a roadside wall near Market Street between 6 and 7 a.m. Witnesses saw the truck weaving in traffic before it hit the wall, and that — not......

A man who police believe is responsible for 11 incidents of sexual assault in northeast Houston struck again last night. The man climbed into a home at Firnat and Lomax around 2:30. The woman who lives there reported that she heard him climb in and saw him standing in her kitchen, watching her 10-year-old daughter sleeping in the living room. The woman initially thought the man was her husband, but soon realized she was mistaken.......

KHOU's Jeff McShan had a much-publicized interview with Quanell X last night — and despite the indication that it would show us who Quanell X really is, we don't know all that much more now than we did before. The only thing that seems clear about Quanell X is that he's full of contradictions. In the interview with McShan, he recalled what he called a turning point in his life: a conversation he had with......

Good morning, Houston. As faithful Houstonist readers, you know we have trouble resisting a good crime report, so we were nearly beside ourselves when we read about the family that might have set a grocery store potato chip display on fire in February. Seriously. It happened at a Sellers Brothers on Telephone Road on Feb. 10, and surveillance video — which you can see if you follow the link — shows a young man......

Three months ago, someone tried to steal an ATM from the Regions Bank branch on North Eldridge Parkway near Spencer Road, prompting the bank to double-bolt the machine to the ground. You'd think that would have taken care of the problem, right? Well, no: Early this morning, thieves used a forklift to rip the machine from the ground. The theft took place around 3 a.m. and was caught by a surveillance camera inside the building,......

Good morning, Houston. Have a roach problem? How about turning it into a windfall? The Houston Museum of Natural Science is offering 25 cents per roach for the first 1,000 live, healthy American cockroaches people bring in. No kidding: a whole quarter for trapping and transporting a roach! The roaches will be used for a museum display on insect sanitary engineers — seems the critters, which are often associated with filth, are actually known......

Good morning, Houston. Or should we say happy National Zucchini Bread Day? Yep, April 25 is the day to celebrate the delicious Southern tradition — so why not hit the kitchen and whip up a batch based on Emeril's recipe? And don't forget to send your friends a National Zucchini Bread Day e-card. No, seriously. >> Appeals court: Bible fight moot: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the legal battle......

The drive-by shooting that killed a 13-year-old Houston middle school student early Saturday morning was likely a case of mistaken identity stemming from a pair of gang fights, police said yesterday. HPD Sgt. Brian Harris said there had been two large gang-related fights at the Butler Skating Rink, 14083 Main St., where Cornisha McCowan and friends attended a dance Friday night. At around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, McCowan's brother-in-law, Sam Monroe, picked McCowan and his stepdaughter......

From the "Thieves in disguise" file comes the story of a man who has carried out one robbery and attempted two others — all while dressed as a U.S. postal worker. The guy's first robbery attempt was at an EZ Pawn location at the East Freeway and Lockwood on March 26; he ended up leaving the store when a clerk asked him for ID. But things went better at a nearby EZ Pawn on Lyons......

Good morning, Houston. In case you haven't heard, Channel 11 has a new anchor to replace Lisa Foronda: She's Lucy Noland, a native of Saigon who's leaving a job as co-anchor of the WNYW morning show in New York City for the job here. "It's time for me to put down roots, to have a house and home," Noland told the Chronicle. "This nomadic lifestyle has been fun. It's taken me far and wide,......

The FBI is on the lookout for a bank robber they're calling the "Desperate Dad" — a guy who robbed an Uptown Wachovia Bank branch last month, claiming that he needed the money because he had lost his job and had a baby at home. The man walked into the bank at 4906 San Felipe at 12:37 p.m. March 6, walked to the teller counter and pulled a chrome pistol from a navy blue zippered......

KTRK has an odd story this morning: According to the station, an investigation into NASA Inspector General Robert Cobb has found that Cobb quashed the release of a Crime Stoppers report on a ring allegedly taken from the finger of one of the astronauts killed in the space shuttle Columbia disaster. Cobb has been under fire for other findings in the report from the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which has been investigating complaints......

Given how much Houstonist loves a good bank robbery story, we don't know how we missed the news item last week about an exceptionally courteous man who knocked over a downtown bank branch Friday afternoon. According to KHOU, the guy walked into the Amegy Bank at 1801 Main St. around 1:30 p.m. Friday and waited in line at a teller window; when he got to the front, he handed the teller a note demanding cash.......

In one of the most bizarre cases of auto theft we can remember recently, a Meals on Wheels truck was stolen yesterday morning from a northeast Houston apartment complex. It happened at about 8:30 a.m. as the truck was making its delivery to the Northwood Villas Apartments in the 5000 block of Aldine Mail Route; though the insulated truck was full of food, it was unclear why anyone would want to steal it. "It is......

There's nothing quite like a story about a bizarre, vaguely stupid crime to round out the week. So, in that spirit, we bring you the tale of the guy who wanted to sell a $15,000 Rolex watch, met the seller, let him try the watch on — and now has no watch and no $15,000. Life can be harsh like that sometimes. According to police, the man advertised the Rolex in some undisclosed place and......

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......

On the South Loop this morning, a story out of a dime novel: A dead woman was found stuffed under a motel room bed, and police aren't sure why she was there. The woman was found at the South Loop Inn at the Loop and Telephone Road at about 1:30 this morning; police say she had checked into the motel earlier this week and was with a man at the time, but that's pretty much......

Here's a Houstonist Fashion Tip: If you're a fan of expensive high-fashion shoes but you don't have the money to actually buy them, it's probably better not to steal someone's credit card and go on a shopping spree. Try Harwin instead — sure, your knockoff Manolo Blahniks might fall apart in a few months, but at least you won't be hunted by the cops like a trio of people HPD says indulged their expensive tastes......