Assaults Texas

Irvine rehabilitation specialist Janni Smith always believed that the Texas millionaire she claims arranged to have her shot--leaving her paralyzed from the waist down--would one day be captured. After a 14-year wait, her fugitive ex-lover was behind bars. Richard Minns, 64, was arrested Tuesday at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on suspicion of obtaining several passports with fraudulent information and names.

HOUSTON -- The latest development in the unfolding sex scandal at San Antonio's Lackland Air Force Base: An instructor was acquitted of sexually assaulting a boot camp graduate and now awaits a verdict on a lesser charge, a military spokesman said. A military judge ruled Tuesday that military prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to support the original sexual assault charge, and the charge against the instructor, Staff Sgt. Kwinton Estacio, was reduced to one of wrongful sexual contact, according to Lackland spokesman Brent Boller.

In the decade since gunshots left her paralyzed from the chest down, Janni Smith has gained national recognition. As a wheelchair athlete, she won more than a dozen marathon races and competed in trials for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. And as president of the Irvine-based Petrofsky Centers for Rehabilitation and Research, she has helped develop medical technologies that enable paralyzed muscles to move for exercise as well as for walking and hand movement.

A black woman has recanted a story of being abducted and raped by white men dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits and admitted she carved the initials "KKK" into her own chest, police said Wednesday. Police in Linden, about 150 miles east of Dallas, said the 32-year-old woman initially told police she was abducted Aug. 30 in the nearby community of Bivins by two white men.

Walker L. Railey, the once-prominent Dallas minister and Los Angeles church executive acquitted of trying to murder his wife after a sensational Texas trial last spring, has hit the lecture circuit. Railey was applauded Wednesday by a group of clergy members in Reseda after telling them that religious leaders are losing public respect because of scandals like the one that engulfed him after his wife was choked nearly to death in their Dallas garage in 1987.

A military school cadet from Laguna Hills whose throat was slashed while he was sleeping, allegedly by two classmates, is living alone in a dorm room fortified with locks, while eight other students have dropped out, school officials said Thursday. Also, the drill instructor who supervised the accused cadets and lived in the dormitory where the attack took place was fired last week, and the suspects, one of whom remains in jail, have been suspended, Marine Military Academy officials said.

A once-prominent Texas minister whose wife was choked and left for dead in 1987 was arrested Tuesday at the Los Angeles church where he serves as an executive after being indicted by a Dallas grand jury on charges of attempted murder. Walker Railey, 45, was arrested by Los Angeles police, accompanied by an officer from Dallas, in his offices at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in the Mid-Wilshire district, authorities said.

David Gonzales of Houston, the World Boxing Council's sixth-ranked lightweight, was in stable condition Sunday after being shot in the back outside a lounge, authorities said. Gonzales, whose record is 23-1-1, was to fight Darryl Tyson of Ft. Worth June 11 for the North American Boxing Federation Championship. Tyson is ranked fourth in the world by the WBC.

Walker L. Railey, the once-prominent Dallas minister and Los Angeles church executive acquitted of trying to murder his wife after a sensational Texas trial last spring, has hit the lecture circuit here. Railey was applauded Wednesday by a group of clergy members in Reseda after telling them that religious leaders are losing public respect because of scandals like the one that engulfed him after his wife was choked nearly to death in their Dallas garage in 1987.

A man who authorities say transmitted the AIDS virus through unprotected sex with at least five women has pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Lawyers say it is the first time in Texas that a person has been charged with knowingly transmitting HIV during consensual sex. Paul Leslie Hollingsworth, 46, was sentenced to nine months of probation.

Iyke Paul Louis Jr., father of the world's only surviving octuplets, faces assault charges stemming from a September altercation at his home with his mother-in-law, authorities said Wednesday. Louis is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 8 on the misdemeanor charges, which carry a maximum penalty of one year in jail. Louis' eight children sparked international fascination after his wife, 27-year-old Nkem Chukwu, finished giving birth Sunday.

Law enforcement officials are tracking a mysterious outbreak of antiabortion violence that is not lethal but potentially more elusive than the bombings and arson attacks that have plagued abortion clinics in recent years. Between late May and early July, 19 abortion clinics--10 in central Florida, five in New Orleans and four in Houston--were squirted, sprayed or injected with butyric acid, an intensely noxious industrial chemical.

A Texas teenager was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly dousing an 8-year-old boy with gasoline and setting him on fire in woods near his home last Sunday. Montgomery County officials said the 13-year-old boy was charged and taken before a judge who ordered him to be held in custody pending trial. His name has not been released because he is a juvenile.

A 13-year-old Texas boy was taken into custody Thursday for questioning about an attack in which an 8-year-old boy was badly burned over his whole body. "So far the young man has admitted to being there when the 8-year-old was set on fire," Montgomery County Sheriff Guy Williams told reporters. His name was not released because he is under 18. The victim, Robert Middleton, emerged with horrific burns from woods near his home in the small town of Splendora, north of Houston, Sunday evening.

Dozens of area residents packed a funeral home Friday for the wake of a black man who was dragged to death behind a pickup truck on a country road. Flower arrangements surrounded the gray and silver casket, with a framed picture of James Byrd Jr. on top of it. Oleather Cooper, 39, knew the 49-year-old Byrd his whole life and recalled how he was always singing. She said the slaying was racist but perhaps could serve a higher purpose.

It was no secret at Immanuel Presbyterian Church that Walker L. Railey had a past. If there was any doubt, it was dispelled one Sunday last fall when he delivered an emotional sermon to the Mid-Wilshire congregation. "I live each and every day with a cloud over my head, but also the assurance that God is on the other side of the cloud," Railey confided to a hushed audience of several hundred. "Therein lies my only hope."

Black members of Congress expressed outrage Thursday but little surprise at the brutal murder of a black man in Texas, and they urged Americans to root out what one called "deep and vicious racism in this country." "It manifests itself at the street level in murder, but it also manifests itself at the boardroom in discrimination," Rep. Albert Russell Wynn (D-Md.) said. Rep.