• Over a dozen people have been robbed at gunpoint on and near Lower Westheimer. HPD says that the robbers approach victims with a gun, rob them of cash, cell phones, wallets and purses and a then a black truck pulls up and the robber and accomplice speed away. • HPD has a new toy. It's a 12 ton armored truck dubbed, "The Bear" and it will be used by SWAT and can transport......

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......

Good morning, Houston. We heard a few weeks ago about a bat infestation at TSU, but now there's something else happening in the halls of academia: a bee infestation at UH. It seems 100,000 of the industrious little critters have taken up residence in the walls of the Cullen College of Engineering, but rather than exterminate, the university is planning to move the bees to a wooded section of campus. Beekeeper Mike Knuckley will......

Good morning, Houston. Seriously, what is it with North Texas these days? Yesterday we had the story of the 18-wheeler full of human heads, and today there's the Fort Worth man who accidentally shot himself in both legs in his cubicle at work. According to police, the 47-year-old man put his .45-caliber gun into his jacket pocket Tuesday morning, then draped his jacket over the back of his chair at an insurance office. When......

Good morning, Houston. Have you ever wondered why our freeways have multiple names — for example, I-45 south of downtown is also called the Gulf Freeway, the section through downtown is the Pierce Elevated and the part north of downtown is the North Freeway? Yeah, we have, too — and it seems we're not alone: The Chronicle's Tex-Arcana column tackled that question this weekend. The answer? In Houston, at least, the names tell where......

Sometimes nothing satisfies a hunger pain like a big helping of fried chicken and fixin’s. But not just any fried chicken. We wanted the kind that didn’t come off a conveyor belt; chicken that’s been soaked, seasoned and fried with love. Perhaps a place where Rockets players can be found after practice. Frenchy’s more than fit the bill. The original store on Scott Street almost always has a line of hungry patrons waiting to place......

Good morning, Houston. Next time you happen to be walking along Northwood Drive in Baytown — and really, we can't imagine why you would be — be sure to use the sidewalk. If you don't, you could end up being slapped with a $150 citation. It happened to Clifton Stewart, a minister who said he moved to the neighborhood to save money; on Aug. 21, Stewart was cited for violating a state law that......

Good morning, Houston. Sure, you've heard a lot about Alamo defender Davy Crockett — but have you ever read his final letter? Soon you'll be able to see it in person: The Texas Historical Commission has bought the letter, which was discovered in a file folder last month, for $550,000. Crockett wrote the letter to his children Jan. 9, 1836, shortly after he arrived in Texas and less than two months before he died......

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......

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......

We're not sure if you've noticed, but it's rained a lot lately. No, really. And the persistent showers are hurting more than our mood: They're also taking a bite out of local businesses. Across the area, people aren't getting concrete poured, they're not getting their lawns mowed, they're not buying plants or playing golf or getting their roofs repaired — and for business owners, that means a tough few weeks. "This weather is killing us,"......

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......

Houstonist remembers the point when gas went over $2 a gallon and oilman T. Boone Pickens said that was no big deal — what we should really worry about is when a gallon gets up to $3. And guess what? We're getting there. This week's AAA Texas gas-price survey reports that the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in Texas is now $2.79 — an increase of 6.8 cents over last week. So......

So here's a unique way to try to avoid being arrested: Early this morning, police say a woman pretended to have a seizure so she wouldn't be taken into custody after leading cops on a chase in north Houston. The incident began around 1 a.m. when an officer tried to stop the driver of a pickup truck at the corner of Werner Street and Witcher Lane, near the North Freeway and Tidwell. The driver fled......

So gas is really expensive, in case you hadn't noticed. But there is a bright spot, even if it is a little one: The price of a gallon did increase this week, but the increase wasn't as steep as last week's. Hey, when we're paying $2.40 a gallon, we take the good news where we can get it. According to AAA Texas, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in Texas this week......

Another night, another series of strong storms: This time, we had isolated reports of 50 mph winds and hail, with a possible tornado reported near Bush Intercontinental Airport. Otherwise, though, things weren't nearly as bad as they could have been except for a couple of incidents: In north Harris County, several cars were stalled on a North Freeway feeder road around 10 p.m. when as much as four inches of rain fell in a short......

Good morning, Houston. Some good news: It's Friday. Some bad news: If you entered a contest on the Chronicle's website, your personal information could have been made public. SecurityProNews discovered a public section of the site that contained the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of thousands of people trying to win stuff from the Chron — and though the information has been removed, there's still the chance that John Q. Public could......

Two people died early this morning when an SUV going the wrong way on the North Freeway hit a box truck head-on. The accident happened around 3:15 a.m. near I-45 and Little York; according to police, a Ford Explorer was heading south in the northbound lanes of the freeway when it struck a small Isuzu truck at high speed. "The speedometer of the Ford Explorer was stuck at 75 when we got there," HPD accident......

Good morning, Houston. Here's one of our favorite news stories this week: During an arson trial downtown yesterday, Hunter, a chocolate lab, took the stand and demonstrated how he investigated the fire in question. The Harris County Fire Marshal's office uses Hunter to sniff out accelerants; he has investigated more than 400 fires and has testified in at least a half-dozen cases. >> Watch that truck: If you pay any attention to HPD's lists......

Have you ever wondered how many people's lives you really touch? Turns out there's no better way to learn than to work at a popular restaurant while you have Hepatitis A: According to KTRK, the county thinks as many as 12,000 people could have been exposed to the virus during 12 days in January and February when a waiter worked while infected. The waiter worked at the Pappasito's at 15280 North Freeway Jan. 23-27, Jan.......

Good morning, Houston. We're beginning today with news that's not happening in Texas, but could have had repercussions in our transportation industry: In Arizona, lawmakers just missed banning truck mudflaps with silhouettes of naked women on them. The ban came in a proposed amendment to a bill regarding the legal height of truck fender splash guards, and it took aim not at racist slogans and busty outlines on mudflaps. "I personally am tired of......

It was kind of a hair-raising night on the North Freeway: First, a pedestrian trying to cross the freeway was hit and killed, and then several hours later a driver ran into an HPD patrol car blocking the roadway after a truck lost its load of nails. The pedestrian accident happened at around 8:45 p.m. near the northbound North Freeway and Parker, where police say a man in dark clothes was trying to cross both......

Ten more red-light cameras have gone online around the city, many of them — like in the last group to begin operating — along the Southwest Freeway. The locations of the new cameras are: West Loop at San Felipe (east frontage road) Southwest Freeway at Bellaire (west frontage road) Bissonnet westbound at Southwest Freeway east frontage road Southwest Freeway at Beechnut (east frontage road) Southwest Freeway at Fondren (east frontage road) Chartres northbound at......

Passengers on a Metro bus in north Houston had a bit of a scare yesterday afternoon when police surrounded the bus because one of the passengers was carrying a gun. At about 4 p.m., a passenger told the bus driver that a woman on the bus was packing heat, so the driver called Metro police and pulled over at a gas station near the North Freeway and Parker. Officers surrounded the bus and the passengers......

Wallace Smith, a 27-year-old Houston man, was charged today with murder in connection with the shooting death of a man on a local sidewalk Monday Two people were injured this afternoon when a car slammed into an office building off the North Freeway A KHOU news crew went to a southeast Houston apartment complex yesterday to check out reports of rising crime and ended up witnessing a guy getting beaten with a baseball bat Ronald......

We don't know if you've noticed lately, but some of the landscape you see as you're cruising down Houston's freeways is, ah, unappealing. It's something you hear people complain about every once in a while — particularly the collection of car lots, furniture stores, run-down strip malls and adult bookstores along the North Freeway, which provide a quick overview of Houston's attractions to people driving into town from Bush Intercontinental Airport. (We find the......

We're thinking we should start a Houstonist driving school sometime. It's not that we're the best drivers on the road, but we know we must be better than people like the driver who decided to nap on the North Freeway last night, causing a five-vehicle pile-up. It happened on the North Freeway near Little York, where police say a sleepy driver decided to stop his car and, according to KTRK, sleep in a lane of......

So this long weekend is chock full of holidays: National Build a Scarecrow Day tomorrow, Visitation of the Virgin Mary Day on Sunday, Stay Out of the Sun Day on Monday and National Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day on Tuesday — not to mention that July is National Baked Beans Month. We know everyone is anxious to hit the road and celebrate scarecrows/virgins/the sun/fences/beans, but when you do, you can expect to pay more for gas.......

All the people on the north, west and southwest sides of town who thought they'd dodged a bullet earlier this week when heavy rain missed them had another thing coming yesterday afternoon as lines of slow-moving, strong storms moved through north Houston and the Richmond area, causing temporary street flooding, delayed flights at Bush Intercontinental and the requisite traffic snarls. Rainfall of nearly 4 inches an hour occurred in the storm up north, flooding......

Speaking of police chases, sometimes they don't involve cars. Take, for example, the case of an HPD officer who had to chase two escaped bulls last night. Yep, bulls. According to the Chronicle, the driver of a bull trailer (we're not sure if there's a technical term) was exiting from the North Loop onto the North Freeway at about 11:30 p.m. when the bulls somehow got out of their trailer. One of the bulls escaped......