Former Houston Oilers linebacker John Grimsley was found dead in his Missouri City home this morning. After receiving a 911 emergency call from the Grimsley household, police rushed to the scene at 9:00am only to find a lifeless body. An autopsy is set to be performed by the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office, however initial reports claim that an accidental gunshot wound was the cause of the untimely death. Grimsley was a sixth round......

Good morning, Houston. If you were an HPD cadet, you'd think you'd want to keep your nose clean — but apparently no one sent that memo to a cadet who was busted this weekend for allegedly buying and selling crack in southeast Houston. The man was caught off Scott and Nagle in the Third Ward; according to KHOU, he told police he had been smoking crack all weekend with at least two other HPD......

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......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Indra Vishnampet: Local Entrepeneur Indra Vishnampet who was recently named "Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur of the Year" by The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce Greater Houston sat down with Purva Patel of The Houston Chronicle and answered a few questions about her local multi-million dollar software integration business which has offices in Houston, Canada and India. Missouri City Not Experiencing "Comcastic" Service Hats off to a group of......

Good morning, Houston. Imagine it: a penthouse apartment in the Galleria area, complete with your own personal dome. Nice — and did we mention it's free? Or at least it is for one guy who's been squatting in the attic of an Uptown business: According to KTRK, he's set up a pretty sweet pad, with cable, a flat-screen TV, surround sound, air conditioning and a bathroom. It's a pretty sweet deal for the guy,......

Houstonist had a thought yesterday as we were boarding our 7 AM flight to Dallas for yet another business trip, "This sucks," which got us pining for the way-too-few days sandwiched between our college graduation and our 8-to-8 gig inhabiting cubes around the country. Then a scene from Ben Stiller's 1994 release, Reality Bites, flashed through our head: Winona Ryder's character, LeLaina a.k.a. Lainey, is "show[ing] some ingenuity" by using her dad's gas card to......

Good morning, Houston. At Houstonist world headquarters, our e-mail boxes are graced almost daily with offers from people who want to move millions of dollars to U.S. bank accounts and allow us to take a huge share of the money just for helping — eh, all in a day. But there's a new e-mail in the same vein floating around now: It comes from someone claiming to be Michelle Kristine Kraiser, the "the Confidential......

Good morning, Houston. If you haven't gotten a speeding ticket in the city lately, consider yourself lucky — a lot of your fellow Houston drivers have. According to a report from the National Motorists Association, Houston is the third worst speed trap in the nation (up from fifth place last year). The ranking was based on the number of Houston-related posts to the NMA's Speed Trap Exchange — which, by the way, is definitely......

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......

Good morning, Houston. If the thought of teeing off atop a downtown skyscraper gets you going, here's some excellent news: For the next week, you'll have the chance! It's part of The Glenlivet City Links, a 9-hole golf course and clubhouse that's touring seven U.S. cities. In Houston, the City Links — which includes a free course, a virtual driving range and a lounge — is set up on the 50th floor of Three......

Good morning, Houston! There's some good news: If you graduated from high school, you're already ahead of a third of Texas students. Of course, that means there's also some bad news — namely, that a third of Texas students don't finish high school. And according to statistics, the situation is even worse in the state's big cities: There, more students drop out than finish high school. Elleen Coppola, a Rice University researcher, said dropouts......

From Missouri City comes the story of a woman who shouldn't be alive this morning: She's Ann Patterson Smith, and her house exploded just after midnight. And we mean exploded — according to reports, the chimney was the only thing left standing. Well, the chimney and Smith, of course. No one's sure yet why Smith's house at 3404 Covey Trail blew up, but the blast was apparently really something. "A noise that sounded much bigger......

You may remember that last month our fair neighbor Galveston was in the news because of the perceived need to hire a marketing firm to revamp the city's image. North Star Destination Strategies out of Nashville, Tennessee was hired to try and persuade a few more folks to head south to the island. After conducting a few surveys and finding out that most thought of Galveston beaches as dirty, stinky cesspools of sorts, North Star......

Earlier this year, the City of Galveston hired outside marketing firm North Star Destination Strategies to help build a campaign that would attract more tourists and residents to the island. After months and months of research, the firm has now delivered campaign ideas and a suggestion to the city: change “Galveston” to “Galveston Island.” Man, that’s going to make singing Glen Campbell’s old hit a lot tougher. Along with the name change (something Missouri City......

A jury sentenced a teenage white supremacist to life in prison today for beating a Hispanic boy with a pipe at a party in April Two more ex-Enron executives, Michael Kopper and Mark Koenig, were sentenced today: Kopper got three years and one month; Koenig, 18 months HISD's enrollment is down by 7,000 this fall; the district blames the drop on more charter schools and people moving to the 'burbs Can anyone ever really replace......

Imagine you're a Missouri City leader and you've stood by and watched as Sugar Land attracted all the fancy business, got developed with huge, expensive houses and built itself a lovely fake downtown. Meanwhile, your own town has managed to stay on the edge of the spotlight, missing out on a lot of the exciting Fort Bend action. What do you do? Press for tax breaks to attract development? Launch a municipal beautification campaign? Advertise?......

Let it never be said that Houstonist didn't warn you about wild creatures. First we told you about bed bugs, then feral cats, then bats, bats, bats, bats and the dreaded Asian cockroach. And now, as food for weekend thought, we bring you alligators. Seems an 8-foot gator is causing some concern for people on and around Lake Houston. The reptile has been spotted near Kingwood, and one resident, Bob Rehak, snapped some shots of......

Thousands of Katrina evacuees have had their power cut off — and the reason, they claim, is that no one ever told them they have to pay electric bills A 21-year-old Pennsylvania college student was taken into custody today after part of a stick of dynamite was found in his luggage aboard a Continental flight at Bush Intercontinental Three cops and two suspected drug dealers were injured Thursday afternoon when gunfire broke out during a......

Remember how Houston was ranked the nation's fifth-fattest city by Men's Fitness magazine this year? If that's been getting you down all year, you'll love this: According to a new list, Houston is the third-slimmest city in the country. The news shocked us so much that we nearly dropped the box of Ho Hos we were snacking on. The new report ranks cities by their average residents' body mass indexes. The title of slimmest city......

HISD trustees voted 6-3 yesterday to reject a 4-cent tax hike that would have brought the district $44 million, saying they didn't want to burden homeowners with extra taxes St. John Baptist Church in Missouri City, founded by freed slaves in 1869, burned early this morning in what police say was a deliberately started fire; an investigation is under way As we head into the holiday weekend, looks like storms may be coming, KHOU's David......

Remember when you were in school and always had to sell crap? Magazines, sausage baskets, wrapping paper, candy bars — it was all done to benefit school programs, and of course you were guaranteed to do pretty well, because what adult would turn down a little kid with a catalog full of sausages? What we never would have imagined was someone stealing our hard-earned money, but that's what police say the PTO treasurer at a......

Oh, how the mighty have fallen: Three months ago, local Krispy Kreme stores closed after a legal fight between the chain and its local franchisee, Lone Star Doughnuts; now, Lone Star's attempt to fill the doughnut hole seems to be on its last leg. Lone Star began operating the ex-Krispy Kremes as Jumbles Dough Factory and Coffee Bar locations March 8, a move the company said would be a "fresh start" for the franchise. But......

Nearly two dozen Missouri City homes have been evacuated as a nearly 400-acre grass fire spreads, but officials say they have the blaze under control Grady Davis, a retired teacher, was robbed and killed this morning as he cleaned his barbecue pit at a northeast Houston car wash A combined $10,000 reward has been offered for information in the Mother's Day hit-and-run that claimed the life of cyclist Eric Schlueter on Hempstead Highway A parent......

Remember how Houstonist talked last week about dealing with alligators? Yeah, we hope the Missouri City family that found a 400-pound gator in their yard yesterday does, too. The alligator crawled under a fence the homeowners put up to keep wildlife out of their back yard on Cicada Drive near Peninsulas Drive. The family's dog found the alligator around 7 a.m. The alligator then lunged at the dog. Neighbors snapped photos of the 10-foot-long reptile......

This just in: Kids are getting high using over-the-counter cold medicines! Missouri City police have arrested a teen in the shooting death of a Fort Bend ISD student at a park yesterday Galveston has become the only city in Texas to have wheelchair-accessible beaches now that its public beach parks have been equipped with beach-friendly wheelchairs The Red Cross may have to cut its van service again because of rising gas prices And meanwhile, Bee......

The price of crude oil fell below $72 a barrel today on news that demand for gas is decrasing A Houston judge ordered a Houston physician not to call herself a doctor anymore today after sentencing Callie Hall Herpin to 10 years in jail for writing hundreds of unnecessary prescriptions A Humble woman is being chased out of her apartment by swarms of bees A Fort Bend student died from a gunshot wound he got......

When a limo just won't do for prom, ask your parents to charter a bus for you and your friends — but beware, because someone may steal your crap. That's what happened to a group of Katy Taylor High School students whose folks hired a bus from Missouri City-based Fantastic Voyages to take them to their prom Saturday night. According to a preliminary police report, the driver said he dropped off the students at the......

Turns out TSU President Priscilla Slade actually did follow university policy on one of her personal expenditures: a vehicle registration fee of $64.30. That's great and all, but it doesn't quite compare to Slade's expenses that weren't allowed under her contract: a whopping $647,949. The numbers come from a report prepared by TSU's internal auditor which shows Slade spent university funds on things like donations to her church, auto repairs, a personal maid and maintentance......

Hundreds of Houston-area students skipped school today to participate in rallies protesting tighter restrictions on immigration, some of them determined to march all the way from Missouri City to downtown. Among them were about 100 students from Jeff Davis High School, a few hundred from Austin and Sam Houston highs, 65 from Alief Hastings and nearly 100 from Eisenhower. A Davis student, Hector Arguelles, distributed a flyer giving a description of pending federal legislation that......

A state parental notification law has reduced the number of abortions in Texas since it was enacted, a study finds Former Gov. Ann Richards has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and will be treated at M.D. Anderson in Houston Police say Manuel Chicas, who crashed his car into a house in Missouri City and killed a couple sleeping there, tried to kill himself in the Fort Bend County Jail Researchers have found that......