#student housing near texas state
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Why live in Lancaster, CA
Lancaster, CA, is a popular choice among people for various reasons. One of the main draws is the city's affordable living cost and consistently sunny weather. The community is also diverse and welcoming, making it an attractive option for people from all backgrounds. Natural attractions like the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve and the Angeles National Forest are nearby, offering residents ample opportunities to explore and enjoy the outdoors. Additionally, Lancaster hosts various cultural events and recreational activities, making it an ideal place to call home for families, young professionals, and retirees alike. I'm not surprised that many people prefer to live in Lancaster, CA.
Rental homes near Antelope Valley
Looking for rental homes near Antelope Valley? Look no further than Vello Valley! Offering fully detached apartments, Vello Valley provides a unique living experience in California that caters to the increasing demand for a vibrant community of detached homes. Enjoy a resort-like atmosphere with modern amenities, beautiful floorplans, and high-end, maintenance-free finishes. Whether you're in need of a two or three-bedroom rental in Antelope Valley or Lancaster, CA, Vello Valley is the top choice for many discerning clients. Discover a new community of rented homes that stand alone, crafted to offer you the independence to flourish. For inquiries, simply call (833) 637-2771.
Lancaster National Soccer Center
If you're looking for an exceptional soccer experience, the Lancaster National Soccer Center is the place to be. With a whopping 35 fields, including 5 FIFA-regulated ones, you will surely have an exhilarating time. But wait, there's more! These fields aren't limited to soccer alone; you can also use them for other sports. They take pride in their partnerships with the Cal South Youth Soccer Organization, as well as the many nearby hotels and restaurants, ensuring your visit is convenient and comfortable. Whether hosting a sporting event or looking for fun, the two activity buildings are available. Enjoy the Lancaster National Soccer Center!
A man from Lancaster is arrested due to a crash.
Authorities said Wednesday that a man was detained for gross vehicular manslaughter and driving while intoxicated after he reportedly smashed into two other vehicles in a Lancaster three-truck incident that killed one man and badly injured a woman. At around 9 p.m. Tuesday, Lancaster Sheriff's Station deputies were called to the intersection of Avenue L at 20th Street West, where a red Chevy Silverado, a gray Subaru Forester, and a Ram 3500 pickup were stopped. The suspect, driving the Ram pickup, crashed into the back of the Forester, pushing it into the Chevy Silverado. I'm glad that he was arrested. Sometimes, some drivers are just so irresponsible. Read more.
Link to Map
Driving Direction
Lancaster National Soccer Center
43000 30th St E, Lancaster, CA 93535, United States
Head north on 30th St E toward E Ave K 12
0.8 mi
Turn left onto E Ave K
Pass by Carl's Jr (on the right in 4.5 mi)
7.1 mi
Turn right onto 40th St W
0.3 mi
Turn left onto W Ave J 12
233 ft
Turn right onto Cantabury St
203 ft
Turn left onto Edam St
0.1 mi
Turn left onto Vintage St
49 ft
Vello Valley
43808 Vintage St,
Lancaster, CA 93536, United States
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of apple pies and bloody knives
chapter one: a haze in the fields
warnings: pilot to slasher!graves x fem!reader, hallucinations, hauntings, paranoia
word count: 1,000
Amber waves of grains only applied to two parts of the United States, the Midwest, and Texas. Even with being one of the most well-known lines within American patriotism, one must see the image of urban life rather than endless fields of golden. Flat plains rolled by the windows of her small Chevy, the peaked window caused strands of brown hair to dance in the warm, late summer air. Over her shoulder in the back of the Impala, boxes of essentials clinked and clattered whenever the pavement proved to be porous
Sporadically hitting small towns on the way to her destination, fields turned into hills and then back to drier, rougher patches of empty land, a white dot of a house on the horizon. Orange clouds illuminated the sky as she turned on her lights, and a wave of dread washed over her. The rear view mirror showed nothing but sun-bleached tar and rocky hills behind her. For a pretty girl, even in the absence of men, she will never find peace, now or ever.
The familiar glow of a 7-11’s enthralled her like a moth to a flame, welcoming her back to civilization and the safety net of a crowd. The chill of a Montanan night shivered through her, arms tight on her chest as the wind whistled a soft tune. ‘No more than 20 minutes…’ She promised herself, stepping through the blast of air.
It didn’t even take 15 when she was back on the road again, tank full, bladder emptied, and switchblade thankfully still closed. Making good time, she started up her ending journey to Marburn, Montana. Never heard of it? Good. She checks the time on the dash of her car, ‘11:32 PM’ it read. It was late and late is always bad for a girl. She steps on the gas.
“How long you gon’ be here for, Sweetheart?” The extended-stay motel clerk asked as he thumbed the toothpick between his lips. The teal paint smothered the crackled walls behind him mixed with the fluorescent lights made him look greenish, hair flowing from the desk fan not escaping this effect either.
She fished for her credit card from her wallet and slid it across the counter to him, “Hopefully for a while, but let’s just say 2 weeks for now.”
Her eyes darted over his face, taking in his image just in case. His patchy stubble and tired eyes lent the appearance of a raccoon.
The man shrugged and swiped her card, a satisfying ding echoed from the machine. “$79 for the first week, then it’s $65 for the next, you got that?”
She continued to stare at him, her eyes empty and dead set on the space between his eyes, almost as if in a daze. “Yes, sir.” She whispered.
She took back her card from his hand and the small key to her room. The clock hit midnight as she tugged on her luggage into the damp and dingy motel room.
Locking the door behind her, she also closed the blinds, hanging up a tarp covering the windows as well. She hid. The room was small, with a bed, a pull-out couch, a bathroom, and a small kitchenette with a gas stove, fridge, and microwave. It was doable for the next few weeks, until she can confirm her work and boarding. That, however, was a task for the future. It all resembled a college dorm except if the student had paid extra to get a suite; she smiled just knowing she wasn’t back in that dump, but her smiled dropped into a thinned-lipped frown knowing she was never far from him.
She thought about the boxes of dishes and other necessities in the back seat of her car, debating on whether or not to risk the trip. Her fingers opened the blinds, face nearing in on the dust and eyes peaked between the plastic. Her eyes traveled to the white Chevy parked upfront, the diamond frame of her license plate peeled off. The empty voids mixed with the glittering crystals reminded her of the emptiness in beehives; some filled with honey and nectar while others were left abandoned, hollowed out as if only there to just be there. She sympathized with them as she looked away, catching sight of the innate feeling of danger.
A pair of eyes stared at her, a figure just out on the other side of the parking lot. The figure stood, hunched over a car trunk and turned backward towards her, eyes peering in like a mannequin. His face etched an image of a familiarity, a far she could never forget as he wore the faded red hoodie that she had stolen from him just months prior, laughter bubbled up in them both.
Now, even that thick, old hoodie couldn’t shield the chill than sprinted down her spine, her ears pooling with blood as her heart drummed a solid allegro in her chest. Her stomach growled. It was getting too late in the night, she thought, not worth the trip. Her fingers relaxed as she pulled herself away from the empty parking lot, only her white Chevy in front.
If there she could describe the room in one mood, unsettling would be the word. Dim, yellow lights caused all the shadows on the peeling wallpaper to enhance itself with long shadows, always looming over her seemingly small form. Despite this, she still found the warmth and comfort of tight sheets in a made bed. It wasn’t heavy like how she would remember her bed at home–or well, what was home, but it was better than the back of her car.
Sleep cradled her in its arms, rocking her to a blissful, silent slumber–which was appreciated in comparison to the long nights of sweat-drenched nightmares and paranoia. She was okay, she chanted in her head, convincing herself and the monster that is anxiety and intrusive thoughts. New environment, new life, new identity, she is truly scattered to the winds; a field of dandelions.
#katzwrites#phillip graves x gn!reader#cod mw2#call of duty#call of duty modern warfare 2#cod mwii#cod#modern warfare 2#fanfic#phillip graves#phillip graves hc#phillip graves x reader#philip graves#phillip graves x female reader#phillip graves x fem!reader#philip graves x reader#graves x reader#graves x fem!reader#graves x you#graves x oc#phillip graves x you#graves cod#graves mw2#graves mwii#phillip graves cod#cod graves#shadow company
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Hiii. This is my first time posting on here but this is gonna be a Joel Miller and y/n story. I do have a Javier Peña story too, so lmk if you want me to post that!!
Please 18+ and I’ll add the appropriate tags for future uploads but this one is just part one for now! Only fluff (for now).
Part two is here
Part three is here
Part four is here
Part five is here
Part six is here
Part seven is here
Final part is here
6,000+ words
PART ONE
There’s a sense of calm in the stifling Texas air today. All of the kids are off of school for the summer, and people are enjoying the crisp sun rays on their dewy, hot skin. You notice that the excitement for the state fair is palpable, easily picking up on the feeling from the young teens who pass you by on the sidewalk.
It wasn’t too long ago that you yourself were in high school, ecstatic for summer vacation, and a well-earned break from the misery of the education system. School was never for you. It wasn’t that you were inept or lazy, but that the other students were insufferable. It was hell going through school, and it was all because of who your dad is.
Not only is your dad the mayor of Austin, Texas, but he’s also one of the wealthiest people in the state. Your parents always wanted you to go to public school so that you could have a normal education and have a ton of friends, but the second everyone made the connection with your last name, you were doomed.
Luckily, they never forced you to go to college. You were able to secure your spot as your dad’s secretary, and making decent money doing it, too. Truthfully, it frustrates you to be in such close proximity with him all day. It’s not that you don’t love your dad, you do. You just wish you had an actual relationship with him.
The two of you never did normal father-daughter stuff, or even spent much time together growing up. It was always helping him prep for a campaign, or him just talking about his job. It’s always seemed like he cares way more about his job than you, and your relationship suffered because of it.
You’ve never brought this to your dad’s attention, and part of the reason is because you’re scared he won’t even care if he knew. You’re just happy to have a relationship with your mom. She’s like your best friend. And since you didn’t have many growing up, it was nice to be close to her.
As you’re leaving the office to head to your car that is parked a bit out of the way, you notice a few ambulances passing by, the blaring sirens and blinding red lights startling you to the point where you hop back off of the sidewalk. The trucks are nowhere near you, but the sudden burst of noise gave you an unsettling feeling in the pit of your stomach.
You can’t help but watch them as they travel to their destination, praying that they’re not turning towards anybody that you know or love. It alleviates some anxiety as you watch them continue down the long road, knowing that the few people you do care about, live closer than to where they’re going.
You’ve just recently moved out of your parent’s house into your own, and it’s been freeing, yet terrifying. The stillness of the house at night, along with the random creaks and pops that you haven’t familiarized yourself with, leave you so uneasy, that it’s hard to sleep sometimes.
It’s only been a week at this new house, and while it’s beautiful and lovely, it feels painfully empty. You haven’t gotten around to going to a local shelter to adopt a cat or dog, simply due to the fact that you work five days a week from nine to five. An animal deserves to have someone around more often than that, in your opinion, and you don’t want them to go from being at a shelter and alone, to being in your home, alone.
There is a perk to this new house, though, and while you know it’s demented of you, you can’t help but feel giddy every time you see the black pickup truck in the driveway next to yours. Next door to you is your dad’s best friend, Joel Miller, and his daughter, Sarah. It was completely coincidental that this was the house that was the most fit for you, and just so happened to have your childhood crush living next door.
You know it’s wrong of you to have a thing for your dad’s best friend who is at least fifteen years older than you, but you know it’ll never amount to anything. He’s a kind man who loves his daughter more than anything in the world, and the fact that he’s extremely hot is just an added bonus.
He has a luscious head of black hair that is just starting to show a few sprinklings of gray in it. His body is fit, yet still thick and not at all lean. It’s his naturally tanned skin that always gets you, and the fact that it looks like the sun personally kissed him when he was born. Tie that all together with a handsome hooked nose, reminding you of a Greek god statue every time you see him. And that nose rests above an always groomed mustache and beard that has its own dash of subtle gray hairs in them.
If you were older and a different person entirely, you wouldn’t hesitate to go after this man. He’s been single for god knows how long, and you haven’t seen him with a woman since his wife died just after Sarah was born, when you were twelve.
Sarah herself is now twelve, going on thirteen in a few months. It’s strange how long ago being thirteen seems to you, but also how it’s like it was yesterday. In truth, you don’t miss your teen years in the slightest. All the awkward growth, hormones, and the question of sexuality was just plain stressful. But now it’s eleven years later, you’re twenty-four, and you’re living in your own house, with your own car, and pretty content with your life for the most part.
Pulling in to the driveway at home, you see Joel outside washing his truck. White streaks of soap cover the vehicle and your eyes are on Joel’s dampened gray shirt and dark blue jeans that he’s wearing beautifully on his perfect body.
It’s ridiculous how hard-up this man has you. He has no idea the sinful ideas you have in your filthy mind about him, or the fact that he could snap his fingers and you’d do whatever he commanded. You’re practically panting as you watch him stretch over the hood of his truck, the gray fabric of his shirt riding up, allowing you a glimpse at his side.
You shake your head, feeling like a creep just watching him do a completely innocent task. You step out of the car, the smell of soap instantly filling your nose as you walk up to your front door.
Joel takes notice of you and waves, putting his massive sponge down on the hood as he walks over.
You’re instantly nervous, feeling your blood pumping faster in time with his steps toward you.
“Hey,” you say smoothly, not at all sounding as nervous as you feel.
“Hi,” he grins, flashing that goddamn adorable smile that melts you every time. “I actually wanted to ask you about that barbecue your dad is having next week. Your dad said to be there at five, and I know how anal he is about that shit, but I have to bring Sarah to a friend’s house that night. Would he care if I was late? I’ve tried calling, but he hasn’t answered, as usual.”
“Oh,” you scoff, “yeah he never answers. I doubt he’d care, but I could always take Sarah if you wanted me to. I didn’t plan on going to the barbecue anyway.”
His straight black brows push together. “Why?”
Laughing a bit sheepishly, you briefly look down to your feet. “I’m just not feeling it. Those events are never fun for me. I’m always just sitting by myself in the corner while my parents schmooze with the town.” You frown, “And now my only buddy Sarah won’t even be there, so I’m definitely not going. She’s the only one who talks to me, when she goes.”
Joel chuckles, bringing a hand to your shoulder. His touch electrifies you. “Come on, I’ll talk to you. It’ll be weird if the mayor’s daughter isn’t there, right?”
You shrug. “I’d rather stay in bed, eat snacks, and watch a scary movie by myself.”
“Well, hey, if you still end up going after you take Sarah for me, I’ll be happy to see you.”
It warms your heart to hear him say that, and you can’t help the heat that’s made its way to your cheeks. “Thanks.”
“And thank you for taking her. It means a lot.”
“Of course. I love her. She’s the best.”
Joel looks back to his house, smiling fondly. “She is.”
You put your key into the lock, turning it before stepping in. “Just text me next week about what time and where the house is, okay?”
He nods. “Thank you again, y/n. You’re amazing.”
Smiling, you step inside, reluctantly closing the door on the face of the sexiest DILF you’ve had ever had the pleasure of knowing. There’s always that thrill when he’s near you, like you’re in high school again talking to your crush against the lockers while you do your best to be as feminine and alluring as possible.
Your phone buzzes from your purse and you pull it out, smiling when you see a text from Joel.
Joel
5:45pm
Taking Sarah to the fair tonight. Would you like to join us?
You’re not sure why, but your heart skips a beat at him asking you. Obviously it’s not a date, and he’s only asking because you’ll be home alone otherwise. But you know that you’d be an idiot to say no at an opportunity to spend time with him.
5:46pm
Sure. What time?
Joel
5:47pm
Gonna finish up dinner then be on our way. Probably 7.
5:48pm
Okay, I’ll see you there.
Joel
5:49pm
Would you like to just ride with me? You know, save the environment from carbon emissions and whatnot.
You audibly giggle.
5:50pm
Lol, sure. I’ll be ready.
You practically twirl around your living room like you’re the main character in a rom-com. There’s even a slight squeal that passes your eager lips at the scenarios running through your mind. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go on the Farris wheel with Joel; to be so close that your legs are pressed together? Maybe he’ll lean in and kiss you, and fireworks will pop above your heads, adding to the romance of the moment.
There’s nothing you wouldn’t give to have Joel return the feelings you’ve had for him since you were going through puberty, but you know that he’s not interested in someone so young. And the fact that his best friend is your dad would also definitely play a part in his lack of interest. He’s a powerful man, and there’s no doubt he’d be furious if anything were to ever happen.
Shaking your head, you push all of the mushy thoughts away, knowing that all they are are silly fantasies that can never be fulfilled no matter how hard you try to manifest them to reality.
It’s nearing seven o’clock, and you’ve fitted yourself into blue jeans, your black Keds, and a t-shirt with your favorite singer on the front. You obviously want to feel pretty around Joel, so you reapplied the makeup that was already on your face for work, touching it up and making it look cleaner. Your hair hangs loosely, even adding the extra effort to straighten it. You know it’ll frizz up because of the heat, but as long as it’s silky for a little bit, that’s all that matters.
Your stomach growls loudly. Because you were so focused on getting ready to see Joel, you didn’t leave yourself enough time to eat dinner. Of course you could always eat something at the fair, but deciding on what is the biggest issue. There’s always so many delicious choices, and you’re not sure which you’ll land on.
There’s a knock on your front door and you swing it open, seeing Joel in his same jeans as before, but with a different shirt on than the one he was cleaning his truck in. This one is nicer. It’s a red plaid shirt that has the sleeves rolled up above the elbows, and you can’t help but notice the fresh smell of his cologne.
“Hey,” you finally say with a smile. “Let me just grab my purse.”
You stretch behind the door to the coat rack where your tan purse hangs by its long strap. You toss it over your shoulder, turning and locking the front door behind you.
“I’m glad you decided to come with. Sarah is supposed to meet some friends there, so I’d just be the stray dad holding all the tickets and prizes,” Joel smiles down at you.
You can’t help but giggle beneath his intense brown-eyed gaze. “I’m glad you invited me. Would’ve been alone all night.”
He nods. “I know. Figured we could both use the company.”
Joel opens your door for you, and your inner imaginary version of you is doing cartwheels, confirming to herself that this is in fact a date. You brush her off, knowing she’s still over-thinking everything.
“Hi, y/n!” Sarah squeaks excitedly from the back seat. “I’m so glad you came.”
You turn, meeting the soft, wide hazel eyes of Joel’s beautiful daughter. “Me, too! I was telling your dad how bummed I am you won’t be my barbecue buddy next week.”
She giggles, flipping her curly hair behind her shoulder. “I’m sorry! My best friend is having a big sleepover and I didn’t wanna miss it.”
“Aw, no, I don’t want you missing out on that to hang out with me at some lame barbecue! That sounds like a blast.”
“I’m so excited,” she beams. “The first sleepover of the summer.”
Joel gets in with a slight grunt, looking to Sarah in the rear view mirror. “And I know not the last.”
“Nope.”
Joel and I both chuckle, the truck pulling away from my driveway as we head through the crowded streets towards the fair.
To no surprise, the place is jam packed with people of all ages, making it nearly impossible to find a parking spot. Joel manages to find one across the street at a baseball stadium, where a lot of other people are parked for the fair as well.
The three of you walk across the street, waiting for a safe clearing before you head towards the ticket booth at the entrance of the fair. Joel easily pays for the three of you, despite your wallet and cash being ready and in-hand.
“Joel,” you say gently, “you didn’t have to pay for me.”
He smiles, shrugging his shoulders. “Please, it’s not a big deal.”
Sarah looks up to her dad, her lit-up iPhone in her hand as she puts on her best puppy dog eyes. “Can I please go meet Stacy and Lilly now?”
Joel sighs. “Fine, but you keep me updated on your whereabouts, okay?”
She nods fervently. “I promise!”
He gives her a small kiss on the forehead before she’s on her way, scurrying off to be with her friends.
“Guess she doesn’t want me around this year,” he says with a small laugh, but it doesn’t hide the pain in his voice.
“Aw, Joel, don’t say that. Sarah loves you, and you’re an amazing dad. She’s just getting to that age where she’s not a kid anymore. She’ll be thirteen soon, right?”
He looks to you as he nods. “Jesus, yeah.”
“She’s lucky to have you, and she knows it. When I was thirteen, I barely saw my dad.”
His brows fix together with sorrow in his twinkling brown eyes. “Really?”
“Well, yeah. He was so focused on running for mayor and his campaigns,” you sigh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to darken the mood,” your laugh lightens the air a bit.
“No, not at all. I just had no idea. I thought you two were inseparable, since you work for him and all.”
Your eyes shift to the dirt path in front of you, watching it as you continue to walk along it with Joel beside you. “We haven’t been close in a long time. He’s a bit self-absorbed.”
Joel snorts with laughter. “Well, I could’ve told you that.”
You both chuckle, and you decide to change the subject.
“So, how was your day? I was surprised to see you home so early.”
It’s clear that he gets your signal to switch the conversation, and he does it without a single fret to his words.
“Yeah, I was, too. It was slow today, actually. Normally, I’m not home until after the sun sets, but they didn’t need us as long today.”
“That’s good,” you grin wide. “I’m sure Sarah was happy to see you.”
His eyes soften as he nods. “She was.”
Joel works in construction, and that only adds to the rugged handsomeness that is this man. There’s callouses at the tops of his palms, as well as various small scars and scrapes on his hands and arms. You’re not sure if there’s anything about him that isn’t a complete turn on.
“See? She adores you. It’s okay if she wants to hang out with her friends. Don’t take it personally,” you nudge him gently.
He chuckles, nodding. “You seem to be very knowledgeable for someone who doesn’t have any kids.”
“Only telling you what I personally experienced as a female teen.”
Joel smiles, his eyes turning to look at the different food booths around. “Do you want something to eat? I can’t imagine I gave you enough of a warning to have dinner.”
Your stomach screams in response, pleading for the relief of food. “Oh, it’s not your fault. I was too busy winding down from work to eat. I’d actually love to get something, I’m just so indecisive.”
“Hmm,” he stops in the middle of the wide dirt path, tapping a long, tanned finger to his blackened beard. “Would you like a turkey leg?”
You shake your head as you laugh. “That sounds—messy.”
“So, what? I’m not judging you,” he smiles warmly.
“Maybe something simpler, like a pretzel.”
He gives you a disapproving look, his hands on his hips. “A pretzel for dinner?”
You roll your eyes as you smirk, not being able to help how hot you think it is when he gazes at you in that way. It’s probably your massive-sized daddy issues that have you squirming beneath his line of sight, but you don’t care. You’ll forever find this man to be as sexy as can be.
“Fine,” you quirk up a brow. “How about I’ll have a pretzel and we can share a funnel cake. Deal?”
Joel pats his stomach. “God, with this body? I really shouldn’t.”
“I promise that there’s nothing wrong with your body.” You say it before thinking, and you instantly advert your eyes away from him, continuing over your odd compliment. “Uh—the pretzel stand is over there,” you point, gesturing to it down the path with your head.
You both walk towards the stand, the smell of fresh, soft, buttery pretzels filling your nose and making your mouth practically water. There’s also a cinnamon-sugar pretzel near the window on display that has your stomach rolling over itself in almost agony.
Joel steps up to the window, pushing a five dollar bill towards the older gentleman in the stand. “Two salted pretzels, please.” He holds up his fingers in a peace sign.
The man nods, taking his money as Joel looks down to you with a victorious smirk.
“You’re annoying,” you laugh, shoving him with your elbow. “Why won’t you let me pay for anything?”
“Because I invited you. Just let me treat you and quit complaining about it.”
God. Even his playful assertiveness is sexy. He could do anything at this point and it would leave you weak in the knees. It’s not just what he says, it’s the sultry allure of his deep voice. It’s a soothing, gentle voice, but also powerful and manly. You’ve never heard him yell, but you know that it would knock you off your feet if you did. Just that thought alone tempts you to make him angry, just to experience firm, enraged Joel for your own wicked pleasure.
He hands you your pretzel, clicking his to yours as he bows his head slightly. “Cheers.”
You laugh, biting into the soft, fluffy flesh of the browned bread. The flaky salt hits your tastebuds with a delicious sting, making you salivate as you chew.
“Mmm,” you groan, “thank you, Joel. I’m starving.”
Joel’s eyes meet yours, giving you a small smile as his jaw flexes from his chewing. “You’re welcome. Now, to that funnel cake stand.”
You nod, walking down the path a bit to be instantly drawn in by the smell of decadent, fried batter. Joel bites at his pretzel again, briefly mesmerizing you with his mouth before you look to the funnel cake menu.
“Are you a chocolate or fruit woman?” he asks, pulling his bifold out again.
“Definitely chocolate, but there’s nothing wrong with both. What about you?”
Joel looks to you with a smirk, licking his lips free of salt. “Chocolate. But I was wondering if maybe we did one with chocolate sauce and strawberries on it.”
“God, you’re amazing,” you practically groan. “Yes. That sounds perfect.”
He chuckles as he nods, both of you waiting in line as you finish your pretzels. Joel takes your paper sleeve from you, smushing it with his as he bunches them together, tossing them in the nearest trash can.
You watch as he orders the funnel cake, enjoying how he’s taken charge of the evening. The thought that he might be doing this because he thinks of you like a daughter makes you suddenly feel sick, and you’re praying that he doesn’t. The fact that he said ‘woman’ and not ‘girl’ when asking if you prefer chocolate or fruit was comforting. It made you hope that he saw you as a exactly that; a woman.
His hand slips into his bifold to pull out another five dollar bill, stopping to gaze up at the menu again.
“Sorry, could you actually add a large lemonade to that, too, please?” he hands the guy a ten. “Thanks.”
“I love lemonade,” you smile wide at him, feeling how hot your cheeks have become.
“Me, too. I just know that I need something to drink after that pretzel, and I figured you did, too.”
You both move to the side so other people can order as you wait for your funnel cake to be finished.
“Thank you. You’re so nice to me, Joel.”
He chuckles. “And you’re nice to me. And Sarah, which means more than how you act towards me. You could hate my guts, but as long as you’re nice to my girl, that’s all I care about.”
His girl. God, what you wouldn’t give to be called that by him.
Joel stretches up to grab the funnel cake and lemonade from the woman who hands it to him, and the both of you find the nearest table to sit down at. He hands you a fork once you’re settled down into an old plastic folding chair at a splinter-inducing wooden table.
His fork crunches into the plastic plate as he stabs the dessert, his mouth stretching out in an ‘oops’ expression.
You can’t help but laugh. “It’s okay, these plates are cheap. If stuff gets everywhere, it gets everywhere,” you shrug.
Joel chuckles, pushing a pierced bit of the cake into his mouth. “God,” he chews, “yes, yes, yes.”
You take your own bite, savoring the sweetness of the chocolate, the strawberries, and powdered sugar. They all combine into a beautiful explosion of delectable sugar in your mouth, making you nod in approval.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” you say, taking a bit more.
“Oh, I agree.” He gives you a half smile. “And thanks to you, I actually allowed myself to eat it. I never eat stuff like this anymore.”
You ruffle your brows. “Why?”
“Well, I’m about to be forty, and my metabolism isn’t the same as it used to be,” he chuckles. “I’ve already got the dad bod.”
“Dad bods are hot!” you blurt, watching as his eyes widen in surprise, and his eyebrows raise. “I just mean that—like—all dad bods are hot. Having a six pack isn’t the rage like it used to be. It’s dad bods.”
Joel laughs, his head turning down to the funnel cake as he continues to eat. He quickly drops his fork as he chews, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“Sarah just texted me to tell me she’s going on one of the big rides. She sent me a picture, look.” Joel flips his phone around, and it’s a picture of a wide-eyed, over-exaggerated with fear, looking Sarah and a large ride behind her.
“She’s adorable,” you giggle. “I never rode those things as a kid.”
“Why not?” Joel asks, locking his phone and tucking it into his jeans again.
“I’m a pussy.”
He lets out a loud laugh, contagious enough to have you giggling along with him.
“Why don’t we go on some? We’ve got the bracelets,” he shimmies his wrist at you.
“Oh, god, Joel. I don’t know.”
“Come onnnn,” he drags out. “It’ll be fun. What’s the point of going to the fair if you aren’t gonna ride the rides?”
Rolling your eyes, you sigh, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Fine, but if I throw up, you’re not allowed to judge me.”
His eyes soften as he stands. “I already told you I’d never judge you.”
Joel gestures the rest of the funnel cake to you, but you turn it down, resulting in it being tossed into the trash. You’re both walking quicker than before, your feet carrying you to the ride where you lay against the side and it spins you in a fast circle.
“I will definitely throw up on that one!” you protest, anxiety clawing its way into your chest.
Joel hops in the very short line. “Are you really going to let my money for your bracelet go to waste?”
You glare at him as you cross your arms with a smirk on your lips. “Didn’t think you’d hold it over my head.”
“Well, now I am,” he teases.
The carney signals you guys forward, and you’re both running onto the ride, strapping yourselves against the padded wall directly beside each other. You can feel your heartbeat in your neck, and Joel looks to you as he guffaws.
“If you’re too scared, we can get off, y/n. It’s really okay.”
“No!” you say firmly, finding your courage. “This ride is my bitch.”
Joel cackles with you joining him.
Your hands are gripping the bars near your shoulders as the ride finishes being loaded up. You can hear it being geared up, the slow spin beginning. It’s nerve wracking waiting for it to get to full speed, but it only happens within a matter of seconds.
You’re spinning so quickly you feel like you’re going to fling through the open ceiling of the ride that you don’t dare to look up into. You know that if you turn your head anywhere other than up, you’ll be vomiting funnel cake and pretzel all over everybody in this ride.
The music in the ride is deafening, as are the mechanics and the wind whipping in your ears. Joel screams out beside you, and you decide to scream with him. Slowly, you turn your head, watching through your whipping strands of hair, his own hair being roughly pushed around by the wind.
The ride comes to a stop after what feels like forever, and Joel stumbles out of his space, tumbling to the ground and falling flat on his back.
“Oh, my god!” you cackle, releasing yourself from your seatbelt confines to stumble carefully over to Joel. You see about three different Joel’s from how completely dizzy you are.
“Ah, fuck. I’m too old for this, y/n,” Joel laughs hysterically, his eyes closed.
“Oh, shut up. You’re not old. Now, get up.” You hook your arm under his, slowly pulling him to his feet.
Your arms stay hooked as you both wobble out of the ride, Joel clutching the railings out of the ride for dear life.
“Give me a minute, I still feel like I’m spinning.” His laughter hasn’t stopped since you set foot on that ride.
Your equilibrium has mostly replenished, and you can’t help but laugh at Joel’s lack of steadiness.
He leans back off the railing after a few minutes, brushing his hair down with his palms. “Ah, I’m a mess.”
“You look fine, Joel,” you giggle, fixing your own hair as you wonder how fucked up it looks. “You still want to ride more rides?”
“Maybe just not as spinny,” he chuckles, finally starting to walk towards you. “Something easy.”
“What about the carousel?”
Joel nods. “Perfect. Let me catch my breath a little on those.”
You walk over to the ride filled with shiny, lavish horses all having a pole going through them. There’s only a few people ahead of you, mostly everybody waiting for the bigger, scarier rides.
Joel and you walk the steps, the ride wobbling a bit as everyone gets to their horse. You pick the one that’s your favorite color, and Joel is seated on a sparkly white one beside you.
“Beautiful,” you giggle.
Joel beams wide at you. “I happen to like my glittery horse, thank you very much.”
The funniest part about it all, is how a man so burly and masculine is giggling like a school girl on the back of a wonderfully feminine horse. You’re both laughing your heads off as the ride starts up, going in big, decently slow circles with your horses sliding up and back down easily.
There’s a bit of a jerk in yours, making you move suddenly forward towards the pole. Joel grips your pole, your head hitting the softness of his hand.
You’re amazed at his reflexes, and also his ability to detect you were going to fly forward.
“Wow, thanks, Superman,” you smile with a slight laugh.
“As soon as we started going, I could see that one was a bit wonky. Unlike my pretty glittery queen beneath me.” He uses his other hand to pat the ass of his horse.
Your horse juts forward again, making your forehead knock against Joel’s hand.
“God, I’m moving. This one is gonna kill me,” you say, quickly hopping off to go to the one on the other side of Joel.
His head turns as it follows you, his eyes examining the horse closely. “It seems good, I think.”
“Oh, yeah. This one is a lot smoother.” You quickly pull your phone out, pointing it to the mirror directly beside you. “Smile, Joel!”
Joel closes his eyes as he presents you with a big, toothy grin, and you giggle as you snap your picture in the reflection.
You examine the photo, laughing at the both of you. You turn your phone to show him and Joel belly-laughs.
“You’ve gotta send that to me,” he giggles. “It’ll embarrass the shit out of Sarah.”
Later, you’re both sitting down at the same table where you had your funnel cake, Joel having purchased another lemonade for you two to share. It brings you a slight thrill to know his lips were wrapped around the same plastic straw that you are currently sucking lemonade through.
You’ve had such a good night with him, that the inner imaginary you is actually starting to believe that you may still end up kissing on the Ferris wheel.
Joel pulls out his phone, standing up. “Okay, Sarah said one more ride and then she’s ready to leave. Let’s go win a stuffed animal.”
“Okay,” you beam, carrying the lemonade with.
He lands on a shooting game, and you have to shoot one hundred pellets into a target to break the bullseye out of the paper. If you do it, you get to pick any prize you want and take it home.
Joel holds the stationary rifle steady, leaning down a bit to keep his eye on the sights. The bullets shoot out quickly with a sharp whistling sound as they crash against the paper. Before he’s even finished with his full round of pellets, the middle of the paper falls down, Joel backing up and triumphantly holding his hands in the air.
“I’m the pellet god!” he cries, making you giggle like an idiot.
“Okay, you can pick your prize,” the younger-looking man says to him.
Joel gestures to you, looking to all the prizes.
Your eyes immediately land on the giant purple ape, pointing with a wide grin. The man climbs up and gets it down, the damn thing being as long as you. Joel takes it and hands it to you, your arms enveloping it into a huge hug.
You turn. “Thank you. I’m gonna name him Joel.”
“Oh, yeah? Do I look like an ape?”
You giggle, shaking your head. “Nope. It’s just because I like him so much.”
Joel smiles softly at you, his brown eyes gazing into yours. You feel weak in the knees by the way he’s looking at you, and you know that you’re reading too much into his gaze.
“Daddy!” you hear, the both of you turning to see Sarah. “Did you win me a stuffed animal?”
Joel looks to you, then back to Sarah. “Actually—”
“Yes, he did!” you beam, handing the gorilla to the little girl who can barely carry it. “But he said you have to name him Joel.”
Sarah hugs the stuffed animal tightly, smiling wide as she nods. “Thank you so much.” She puts the animal down briefly to give her dad a huge hug, his arms falling to wrap her up.
Your eyes are a bit bleary as you watch their moment, wishing that your dad would’ve given a damn enough about you to even take you to a fair.
Back at home, you say good night to Sarah as Joel pulls into his driveway. Sarah gives you a hug, then runs inside with her big stuffed animal clung to her side. Joel walks you to your door, peering down at you as you unlock it.
“That was sweet of you to give that to Sarah,” he says sweetly. “Thank you, y/n.”
“Oh, please. I’m sure it means more to her than to me.” Your body faces his. “Thank you for tonight. I had such a good time.”
“I did, too. I’m happy you came with.”
“Me, too.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and all you hear is the chirping of crickets and the buzzing of the cicadas.
“Anyway, good night, Joel.”
“Good night, y/n.”
You walk into your house, closing the door behind you as your back presses against it. Of course you wanted that gorilla, knowing that Joel won it for you, but you wanted Sarah to have it more.
Their relationship is so special and rare. You would kill to have your dad give you more than a passing glance in the last ten plus years. It makes you happy knowing that they will have a good relationship forever, and Joel will make sure of it because he loves her more than anything in the world.
***
#pedropascal#joel miller#tlou#the last of us#pedro pascal fic#joel miller fic#pedro pascal smut#joel miller smut#y/n fics#the last of us fic#smut#javier pena#javier pena smut
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Jo Ann Gibson Robinson ,unsung activist (April 17, 1912 – August 29, 1992) was a civil rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama.Known for initiating the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, AL, USA
Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a short time. Five years later, she went to Atlanta, where she earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University. After teaching in Texas she then accepted a position at Alabama State College in Montgomery. It was there she joined the Women's Political Council, which Mary Fair Burks had founded three years earlier. In 1949, Robinson was verbally attacked by a bus driver for sitting in the front "Whites only" section of the bus. Her response to the incident was to attempt to start a protest boycott. But, when she approached her fellow members of the Woman’s Political Council with her story and proposal, she was told that it was “a fact of life in Montgomery.” In late 1950, she succeeded Burks as president of the WPC and helped focus the group's efforts on bus abuses. Robinson was an outspoken critic of the treatment of African-Americans on public transportation. She was also active in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
The Women's Political Council had made complaints about the bus seating to the Montgomery City Commission and about abusive drivers, and achieved some concessions, including an undertaking that drivers would be courteous and having buses stopping at every corner in black neighborhoods, as they did in European areas. After Brown vs. Board of Education, Robinson had informed the mayor of the city that a boycott would come and then after Rosa Parks arrest, they seized the moment to plan the boycott of the buses in Montgomery.
On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move from her seat in the African area of the bus she was travelling on to make way for a white passenger who was standing. Mrs. Parks, a civil rights organizer, had intended to instigate a reaction from white citizens and authorities. That night, with Mrs. Parks permission, Mrs. Robinson stayed up mimeographing 52,500 handbills calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was initially planned to be for just the following Monday. She passed out the leaflets at a Friday afternoon meeting of AME Zionist clergy among other places and Reverend L. Roy Bennett requested other ministers attend a meeting that Friday night and to urge their congregations to take part in the boycott. Robinson, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, two of her senior students and other Women's Council members then passed out the handbills to high school students leaving school that afternoon. After the success of the one-day boycott, African citizens decided to continue the boycott and established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected president. Jo Ann Robinson became a member of this group. She had denied an official position to the Montgomery Improvement Association because of her teaching position at Alabama State. She served on its executive board and edited their newsletter. In order to protect her position at Alabama State College and to protect her colleagues, Robinson purposely stayed out of the limelight even though she worked diligently with the MIA. Robinson and other WPC members also helped sustain the boycott by providing transportation for boy-cotters.
Robinson was the target of several acts of intimidation. In February 1956, a local police officer threw a stone through the window of her house. Then two weeks later, another police officer poured acid on her car. Then the governor of Alabama ordered the state police to guard the houses of the boycott leaders. The boycott lasted over a year because the bus company would not give in to the demands of the protesters. After a student sit-in in early 1960, Robinson and other teachers that had supported the students, resigned their positions at Alabama State College. Robinson left Alabama State College and moved out of Montgomery that year. She taught at Grambling College in Louisiana for one year and then moved to Los Angeles and taught English in the public school system. In Los Angeles she continued to be active in local women's organizations. She taught in the LA schools until she retired from teaching in 1976. Jo Ann Robinson was also a part of the bus boycott and was strongly against discrimination.
#african#kemetic dreams#afrakan#africans#afrakans#brown skin#brownskin#Jo Ann Robinson#alabama state college#macon#fort valley college
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Summer Math
As usual, great work from OURFA2M2.
REU Programs
Discrete and Continuous Analysis in Appalachia
Program Runs: June 3 - July 26
Application Deadline: March 4th
Undergraduate US citizens who expect to graduate AFTER July 26, 2024, and especially such students attending university in the Appalachian region apply for the DCAA REU. The projects center around probability and data analysis, as well as linear algebra and combinatorics.
Participants will receive a $4,800 stipend and paid housing for 8 weeks during Summer 2024.
Participants funded by DCAA must be US Citizens or Permanent Residents of the United States. Students who are women, underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and those whose home institution have limited research opportunities in mathematics are encouraged to apply.
Applied Mathematics and Computational and Data Science
Hosted at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Program Runs: June 13th - August 12th
Review of applications will begin on March 15, 2024 and offers will be made by April 1, but competitive late applications may be considered until April 15.
Students will work collaboratively on group research projects in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, and computational and data science, including applying theoretical models to physical and biological phenomena. In the application the student should choose one of the two possible research topics:
Wave Phenomena and Mathematical Modeling
Mathematical Modeling of Spatial Processes and Deep Spatial Learning
Only US citizens or permanent residents are eligible.
Women and underrepresented groups in Mathematics are encouraged to apply!
Stipend $5400 plus $900 meal allowance and $1000 travel expenses. Housing will be provided.
Computational Modeling Serving The Community
Program runs: June 10th - August 16th
Application Deadline: March 31st
Held Virtually in 2024
The focus of this REU is computational modeling to serve and enhance communities. Students will be involved in multi-disciplinary, community-based research projects and trained in computational thinking across different disciplines. In doing so, they will gain an understanding of the potential and limits of these tools and how they can serve diverse communities.
The activities of this virtual REU Site will involve a 2-week training followed by an 8-week research project completed under a faculty mentor’s guidance and with the involvement of a community partner.
Only US citizens or permanent residents are eligible.
Students from institutions with limited STEM and research opportunities (such as 2-year community colleges) and tribal colleges/universities are specifically encouraged to apply.
Stipend $7000 + $1400 meal allowance and $2200 housing allowance
REU Program in Algebra and Discrete Mathematics at Auburn University
Program Dates: May 28 - July 19
Application Deadline: March 25th
See the program webpage for more info on problems and ares.
Participants will receive a stipend of $4,500 and will live near campus at 191 College with housing paid.
NSF funding is restricted to US citizens and permanent residents. Other self-funded students are welcome to apply.
Polymath Jr.
Program Runs: June 20th - August 14th
Application Deadline: April 1st
Application Here
The Polymath Jr program is an online summer research program for undergraduates. The program consists of research projects from a wide variety of fields. For more information go to the website linked above.
The goal of the original polymath project is to solve problems by forming an online collaboration between many mathematicians. Each project consists of 20-30 undergraduates, a main mentor, and additional mentors (usually graduate students). This group works towards solving a research problem and writing a paper. Each participant decides what they wish to obtain from the program, and participates accordingly.
MathILy-EST
Program runs: June 16th - August 10th
Application Deadline: April 2th
In 2024 the MathILy-EST topic will be combinatorial geometry of origami, an area that mixes discrete mathematics, geometry, and analysis, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Hull.
MathILy-EST is an 8-week intensive summer research experience for exceptional first-year college students. MathILy-EST provides early research opportunities each year for nine college students who are deeply but informally prepared for mathematics research. The focus of the program is on first-year students, with second-year and entering college students also considered for participation.
Stipend- $4800, housing and meals included.
Internships
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Summer Internship
Programs Begin: May and June
Registration Deadline: March 29th
Summer Internship ProgramThe JPL Summer Internship Program offers 10-week, full-time, summer internship opportunities at JPL to undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. As part of their internships, students are partnered with JPL scientists or engineers, who serve as the students' mentors. Students complete designated projects outlined by their mentors, gaining educational experience in their fields of study while also contributing to NASA and JPL missions and science.
Conferences
Women in Data Science Livermore
“WiDS Livermore is an independent event organized by LLNL ambassadors to coincide with the annual global Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference held at Stanford University and an estimated 200+ locations worldwide. All genders are invited to attend WiDS regional events, which features outstanding women doing outstanding work…This one-day technical conference provides an opportunity to hear about the latest data science related research and applications in a number of domains, and connect with others in the field. The program features thought leaders covering a wide range of domains from data ethics and privacy, healthcare, data visualization, and more.”
Hybrid, free event: In-person at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or Virtual
Registration Deadline: March 1, 2023
Date: March 13
The International Mathematics and Statistics Student Research Symposium (IMSSRS)
Date: April 13, 2023.
Location: Virtual
“IMSSRS is a free conference for all mathematics and statistics students (high school, community college, undergraduate, graduate) to share their research with the rest of the world, to learn about current research topics and to hang out with like-minded math and stat enthusiasts. Presenters must be students, but everyone is welcome as an attendee. Please feel free to share this opportunity with other students who might be interested.”
Abstract submission and registration deadlines: March 22, 2023.
To learn more, please visit the the IMSSRS website.
OURFA2M2
Online Undergraduate Resource Fair for the
Advancement and Alliance of Marginalized Mathematicians
Ashka Dalal, Gavi Dhariwal, Bowen Li, Zoe Markman, tahda queer, Jenna Race, Luke Seaton, Salina Tecle, Lee Trent [email protected] ourfa2m2.org
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Crimes of Impulse - Murders of Jealousy and Rage
Impulse crimes are commonly referred to as ‘crimes of passion’ or acts carried out in the ‘heat of the moment’. Often the ‘passion’ concerns a romantic or sexual relationship, or may simply mean no more than any strong emotion one is experiencing such as rage or anger.
Broadly speaking, crimes can often be broken up into two defined categories: expressive and instrumental. Expressive crimes, or our crimes of impulse, are contrasted by instrumental crimes; those preceded by planning, and carried out with malice aforethought. Certain motives behind crimes are judged as more understandable and forgivable; others as vile or inhuman.
When things go wrong in the sphere of love, we may find jealousy - and where we find jealousy, to an extreme enough degree, serious crimes including murder can occur, many as acts of spontaneity and in the heat of ‘passion’. Jealousy can be understood as an extreme emotional state, hardwired in our brains over centuries of evolution, to safeguard what we consider to be most precious to us. Our susceptibility to jealousy is shared by near all of us, and is why we so often find it in the works of art and literature - from Shakespeare’s Othello to Euripides‘ Medea. Of course, not all spontaneous violence and murder relates to jealousy - violence during brawls or in the course of an argument are often spurred by feelings of intense anger and rage.
Jealousy Murders
George Skiadopoulos
In 1999, George Skiadopoulos was convicted of the murder of 31-year old Julie Scully. A former model, Julie met George, a Greek sailor, while on a cruise in the Caribbean. Bored in her marriage to her current husband, Julie and George began an affair, following which Julie divorced her husband and began to live with George. An intensely jealous man, George often spied on Julie’s private phone calls and became increasingly argumentative, in one instance going so far as to choke Julie’s mother. After charges forced him to return to Greece, Julie, who had returned with him and grown weary of both George and her new life, insisted on returning to the United States. George lured Julie to a remote spot and strangled her, before proceeding to dismember the body and dispose of it in the Aegean Sea.
Clara Harris
Clara Suarez Harris, the only child of an affluent family, lived an upscale and flourished life in Houston, Texas with her husband, David Harris, both of whom shared in the profession of dentistry. Busy with both motherhood and a successful practice, David felt sidelined by Clara, and soon began an affair with his receptionist, Gail Bridges. However, the affair soon become known to Clara, who, after hiring a private investigator, traveled to the hotel David and Gail were staying in. Upon them emerging from the lobby, Clara proceeded to mow down her husband with her car, driving over him a further two times in order to kill him.
Jeremy Akers
Born to a working-class family in Mississippi, Jeremy Akers was the typical all-American overachiever - a straight-A student, bodybuilder and highly competitive individual; graduating law school before serving in Vietnam. Upon his return, Jeremy married Nancy Richards, to whom he was brash, domineering, jealous and possessive. The marriage soon began to deteriorate. Depressed after the birth of her third child and feeling unappreciated by her husband, Nancy struck up an acquaintance with truck driver, Jim Lemke. The pair shared an appreciation of writing and soon became lovers. Having already suspected the two’s infidelity, Jeremy’s feelings only escalated upon Nancy suing for divorce. Using the pretext of discussing divorce details, Jeremy lured Nancy back to their house, where he shot her to death with a .38 before turning the gun on himself.
Impulse Murders: Emphasis on Rage
Robert Rowe
Robert was born one of two brothers raised in a Protestant family. Married to a Catholic woman (despite the protests of his mother) to whom he had two sons with: Bobby and Chris, who was born blind and deaf due to his wife’s early contraction of rubella during pregnancy. Robert was described as unusually stoic in the face of his son’s condition, forming a support group for other couples in similar situations. When he was forty, he and his wife adopted a young girl. Three years later, Robert’s mother passed away, but not before humiliating him by admitting she wished she had aborted him before he was born, as she had with her first two pregnancies. She considered Robert as nothing more than a lowly bureaucrat and a fake, and disinherited him in a final act of spite. Robert soon became seriously depressed, suffering recurrent dreams in which his mother urged him to kill his family. Receiving psychiatric treatment for his depression, Robert was unable to continue work as an attorney and took up a job as a New York cab driver. However, not long after, his cab was stolen and Robert was unwillingly reduced to a house husband while Mary worked. Upon discovering his other child, Bobby, had developed a congenital hip disease that may render him wheelchair bound, Robert ceased taking his medication and slipped further into depression. The suggestion to place Chris in the care of an institution was raised by Robert, but ultimately dismissed by his wife, further deteriorating the situation. The culmination of these events came about in 1978, wherein Robert took a baseball bat to his three children, bludgeoning them to death. Upon her return home, Robert instructed his wife to put on a blindfold as he had a ‘surprise’ for her - the surprise being him proceeding to bludgeon her to death with the bat as well. Robert then attempted suicide by way of the gas from his oven, but was rescued by a neighbor.
Susan Wright
Susan Wyche worked as a go-go dancer at the local discotheque, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Jeff Wright. An affair soon ensued, the result of which was Susan falling pregnant to Jeff, who, to Susan’s irritation, delayed in marrying her until she was eight months along in her pregnancy. While Jeff’s job as a fairly successful salesman afforded them the ability to live in relative comfort, he was addicted to both cocaine and other women - avocations ruinous to both their finances and their marriage. In 2003, Susan’s anger having reached a tipping point, she enticed Jeff into their bedroom under the pretext of engaging in bondage activities, allowing himself to be restrained to the four corner-posts of their bed. In a burst of rage, Susan mutilated his genitals and stabbed Jeff near two hundred times. Panicked, Susan dragged the body to their yard before disposing of it in a pit, dug earlier by Jeff for an unknown reason. Susan had planned to tell people Jeff had simply ‘disappeared’, however this would prove to be in vain, as their dog dug up the body only a few days later.
Dr. Bruce Rowan
Idaho-born to a large family, of which he was the youngest, Bruce Rowan was depressed for most of his life, grappling with feelings of unworthiness and suicidal idealisation. During the course of his academic studies as a medical student, Bruce continued to suffer from suicidal thoughts, for which he was temporarily hospitalised. Debbie, Bruce’s girlfriend, stood by him during this time, partly due to her love for him, partly out of the fearful belief that were she to leave, he would attempt to kill himself. The pair married and spent considerable time traveling the world and doing charitable work in various countries before returning to the United States to settle down. Bruce was still determined to travel, to provide aid to the needy, in hopes this would alleviate his continual feelings of unworthiness. Following their adoption of a young girl, Debbie was often preoccupied with caring for their baby, and Bruce, saddled with chores and finding himself with less quality time with Debbie, began to grow resentful. In 1998, Bruce’s resentment turned to rage, and he murdered Debbie using an axe. Bruce then placed the body in their car before pushing it down a hill in an attempt to convey the appearance of an unfortunate accident. At trial, Bruce was ultimately found not guilty by way of mental illness.
(source)
#true crime#tc#psychology#criminal psychology#crime#criminology#study#i've been pretty inactive on this blog over the last 2 years as you can imagine life has been tumultuous#and then i'm back with one long post out of nowhere#but anatomy of evil remains unfinished on my shelf and this is my way of trying to make it to the end#this one was a doozy to read and type up#tw murder#tw suicide
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In a nondescript house on a quiet street in a middle-class suburb of Houston, Texas, Alaa Allawi hunched over his black and gold laptop. It was early 2017, and Allawi ranked among the top 10 vendors on AlphaBay, at the time the dark web’s biggest bazaar for all manner of illegal wares. Every week he moved dozens of packages of illegal narcotics: cocaine, counterfeit Xanax, and fake OxyContin.
An order came in from a young marine in North Carolina. He wanted Oxy. Allawi went about fulfilling the order, choosing from among the bags of powders and chemicals strewn about his attic and garage. He had precursor chemicals, binding agents, and colored dyes from eBay, as well as fentanyl—a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin—from China. “Man, you can order anything off the internet,” Allawi once told a friend. It was the secret to his success.
Allawi poured the ingredients into a Ninja blender, pulsed it until the contents seemed pretty well mixed, then went outside to the shed in his backyard. Inside were two steel pill presses, each the size of a small fridge and dusted with chalky residue. He tapped the potent mixture into a hopper atop the press, which came alive with the push of a button. Out shot the pills a few minutes later, stamped to look like their prescription counterparts. Soon, the fake OxyContin was ready to be shipped, sealed first in a bag and then stuffed into a parcel. A member of Allawi’s crew dropped the order off at the post office, along with a pile of other packages addressed to buyers all over the country.
If Allawi believed the dark web’s anonymity was enough to shield him from the prying eyes of law enforcement, he was wrong. Allawi’s work—slipping small amounts of fentanyl into counterfeit pills, making them effective but highly addictive and sometimes lethal—was fueling the latest deadly twist in a national opioid epidemic that has taken more than 230,000 lives since 2017. Allawi’s contribution to that crisis had made him a prime target for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, and federal agents were intercepting parcels containing his fentanyl-laced pills from Kansas to California. Allawi didn’t know it at the time, but shipping these pills to North Carolina would cement his downfall.
Today, Allawi sits in a federal prison in northern New York, where he’s serving a 30-year sentence. His case was the first prosecution for dealing fentanyl using the dark web and cryptocurrency in the American Southwest, and investigators described his operation as a bellwether for the growing counterfeit pill market in the US. Over the course of more than two years of email exchanges, he told me his story: a criminal odyssey whose seeds were planted thousands of miles away, on a US Army base in Iraq.
When the United States invaded Iraq, Allawi was a 13-year-old living in a suburb of Baghdad. On his 18th birthday, he applied to become an interpreter for the US Army. His uncle, a doctor, had encouraged him to learn the language from a young age. Allawi’s English wasn’t great, but he had been a sharp student, the kind of kid who dreamed of going to medical school himself one day. He got the job.
He was quickly dispatched to Rasheed Airbase near Baghdad, where he bounced from one unit to the next. The job paid well by Iraqi standards at $1,350 a month, but it was dangerous. Al Qaeda didn’t look kindly on Iraqis who collaborated with the US. Allawi says that insurgents tied one of his friends, also an interpreter, to the back of a car and dragged him around the neighborhood until his limbs tore apart. They hung another from an electric pole and left his corpse up for days as a warning. Allawi took to wearing gloves and masks while on patrol in his neighborhood so he wouldn’t be recognized.
The work was also occasionally heart-wrenching. Allawi recalls one house raid where the Americans were searching for someone suspected of cooperating with al Qaeda. After they made an arrest, the soldiers realized their satellite phone was missing. An officer proceeded to question several women who were in the house. When he got to an elderly woman, he ordered Allawi out of the room. Minutes later, the woman ran out after him, tears streaming down her face. All the women there fell to their knees, begging Allawi to stop the search. The officer, they said, had frisked the older woman and reached for her private parts. Allawi was livid, but there wasn’t much he could do. “I felt not only enraged but also the feeling of a person that belongs to an invaded country and the humiliation that comes with it,” he says. Eventually, the soldiers found the phone on top of a fridge, where one of them had left it.
Most of the time, though, Allawi got along well with the Americans. Thanks to years of watching Hollywood movies, he had a good grasp on their culture and wouldn’t say anything when they crossed their legs or exposed their soles, which are considered insults in the Arab world. “Everyone liked Alaa,” says Daniel Robinson, who worked with Allawi as a contractor in Iraq. The two men spent a lot of time together on base, sharing meals and swapping stories about their lives and families. Robinson smoked his first hookah on the floor of Allawi’s barracks.
Steroids were prevalent on US bases. “As easy to buy as soda,” one military contractor told the Los Angeles Times in 2005. Allawi began selling them to American soldiers and was dismissed from the unit he’d been serving with. Within a few months, he got another translation job, this time with AGS-AECOM, a private contractor rebuilding maintenance depots at Camp Taji, near Baghdad.
Now Allawi spent his days sitting behind a computer in a cubicle, translating operation manuals for Humvees that the US was reselling to Iraq. Allawi had always loved being around computers. When he was 14, he’d purchased parts one by one—a hard drive here, a RAM module there—until he had assembled a functioning machine. At Camp Taji, he immediately dove in, probing the company’s internal networks like a deep-sea diver exploring an unknown world. “The depot job was a boring one,” he says. “Not much was happening, but I used half of my job time to learn coding and hacking.”
It was also at Camp Taji that Allawi met Eric Goss, an impish 25-year-old Texan who shared his love of hip hop and would become a friend. Goss recalls one day when the camp’s head of operations called a meeting with the translators and contractors on the base. Allawi, he announced, was now cut off from accessing the internet on his computer. According to Goss, Allawi had hacked their boss’s email, found messages he was sending to his mistress, and forwarded them to the boss’s wife. (Allawi denies that he did this.) But the new restrictions didn’t stop Allawi. He found a way to install a password recovery tool on his computer that he could use to crack his way into the company’s wireless network. Around Camp Taji, Robinson recalls, “the running joke was, don’t let Alaa on your computer.”
Allawi put his burgeoning tech skills to use off base, as well. He built a website called Iraqiaa.com, an online dating and chat platform aimed at young Iraqis. At least one guy ended up marrying a woman he met on the site, Allawi says. At Iraqiaa’s height, he was earning a cushy $5,000 a month from subscriptions. People started asking Allawi to design sites for them. He purchased a server from a cloud provider and started his own hosting company. For a time, it looked like he could put together a tech career in Iraq.
Many of Allawi’s fellow interpreters had chosen to leave Iraq for the US as part of a special visa program. Goss, who had returned home to Houston, kept probing Allawi on MySpace: “When are you getting your ass to the United States?” For a while, Allawi put him off, but his outlook on life in Iraq was changing. It dawned on him that his options for pursuing a full-fledged IT career there were limited. “I realized that I couldn’t go further in my country,” he says.
In 2012, Goss received a message from Allawi. He was coming to the US.
On September 12, Allawi landed in San Antonio.
He was ready to start a new life in Texas. Catholic Charities set him up with a driver’s license, food stamps, a $200 monthly stipend, and a free place to stay. He received an online high school diploma, then enrolled in a pre-nursing program at San Antonio College. He managed to complete four semesters, but eking out a living soon took priority. The food stamps were valid for only six months, as was the rent-free arrangement. Allawi found a job as a machine operator at a door manufacturer 45 minutes away. The pay barely covered his commute and college expenses.
Allawi moved in with another former translator named Mohamed Al Salihi, who had arrived in Texas more recently and was moonlighting as a bouncer. They had a spare room, which they advertised on Craigslist to earn extra money. Their first renter, Allawi says, was a young woman who liked to party with a group of weed-smoking friends. Soon enough, Allawi was hanging out with them.
Allawi was spending enough time with American college students to sense a business opportunity. He started selling weed at parties near the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). “It was just for surviving,” he says. He was intent on furthering his education, he insists, and took on a student loan. The plan was simple: pay his bills, sell weed at parties, and go to school. But this new venture put him in contact with other drug dealers and harder substances. “There is American saying,” Allawi adds. “If you hang around the barber-shop too long, you will end up with haircut.”
In 2014, he was evicted for failing to pay $590 in rent. For a brief period, he slept in his car. He started selling cocaine on the street. On January 14, 2015, Allawi was arrested while driving with a small-time drug dealer who was known to local law enforcement. An officer searching the vehicle found less than a gram of cocaine, 10 Adderall pills, and about 100 Xanax pills, according to Allawi, who says the tablets belonged to the passenger. Allawi was charged with the manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance, but because he had no criminal record, he was sentenced to community service. His run-in with the law didn’t dissuade him from selling drugs. He was just getting started.
Allawi had reconnected with Goss by then. Sometime in 2015, Goss got him a job designing a website for a business in Austin. One of the employees confided to Allawi that he’d been buying drugs on the dark web. “It’s like an Amazon for drugs,” he said. Intrigued, Allawi did his own research. “I went and asked the wizard of all time, Mr. Google!” he says.
The introduction blew the doors of drugmaking wide open for the Iraqi. Allawi wasn’t content dealing on the street anymore. He was chasing a broader market than San Antonio—hell, a broader market than Texas. He bought a manual pill press on eBay for $600, eventually upgrading to a $5,000, 507-pound electric machine capable of spitting out 21,600 pills an hour. He also used eBay to purchase the inactive ingredients found in most oral medications, such as dyes. On May 23, 2015, Allawi created an account on AlphaBay. He named it Dopeboy210, most likely after the San Antonio area code, according to investigators. That fall, Allawi dropped out of school for good.
At the time, AlphaBay was one of a handful of would-be successors to Silk Road, the infamous dark-web market that had been shut down in 2013. If you had a Tor browser and some bitcoins, AlphaBay offered drugs by the kilo, guns, stolen credit card data, and more, all with complete anonymity—or at least that’s what many customers believed. Between 2015 and 2017, the site saw more than $1 billion in illegal cryptocurrency transactions, according to the FBI.
DopeBoy210 eventually offered no fewer than 80 different products. X50, a package of 50 Xanax pills, was one of Allawi’s flagship items and earned enthusiastic reviews. “Good shit,” one AlphaBay customer wrote, according to data provided by Carnegie Mellon professor Nicolas Christin. “Kick ass,” wrote another. The pills were fake.
At first, Allawi blended chemicals with methamphetamine and used his press to churn out tablets stamped as Adderall and Xanax. Students looking to pull an all-nighter or riddled with anxiety craved this stuff; UTSA made for a lucrative outlet. Allawi then moved on to fake OxyContin pills laced with fentanyl that he ordered from China on the dark web. (Allawi declined to say why he switched to fentanyl, but investigators told me that drug dealers like it because they can make thousands of pills using minute amounts.)
Allawi expanded his operation to a small circle of trusted associates. Some he had met at house parties, like Benjamin Uno, a twentysomething Dallas native whose promising basketball career was cut short by injury, and Trevor Robinson, a mustachioed fan of Malcolm X (with no relation to Daniel Robinson, the contractor). Uno helped Allawi manufacture the pills, and he and Robinson took charge of mailing out the merchandise. (Uno and Robinson didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Allawi also recruited Al Salihi, his old roommate, to guard drugs stashed at an apartment 10 minutes from UTSA.
Sporting a beard and a tattooed right arm, Hunter Westbrook had come to UTSA after toiling away in the oil fields of West Texas. The patrolman was used to dealing with the occasional marijuana trafficker on campus. But toward the end of 2015, something changed. Adderall pills, not just weed, flowed into dorms and parties. Then the overdoses began. When UTSA analyzed some of the pills in a lab, they were found to be laced with meth.
As a campus cop, Westbrook could do little more than stop cars for traffic violations, so he reached out to the San Antonio Police Department for help. In the spring of 2016, he sat in a coffee shop and compared notes with Janellen Valle, an SAPD narcotics officer who was on a joint task force with the DEA. The two cops realized that their findings lined up. A Middle Eastern guy was apparently flooding the campus with marijuana and counterfeit pills. Tips from students led to a name: Alaa Allawi.
Soon after, the DEA took over the case. Investigators say that some pills at UTSA contained fentanyl. (Allawi says he never sold fentanyl on campus, only online.) The country was drowning in the opioid, and stanching the flow was a priority for the agency. The number of overdose deaths attributed to it had skyrocketed, from 1,663 in 2011 to 18,335 in 2016, surpassing those from prescription painkillers and heroin.
The DEA’s San Antonio office was used to handling street dealers and Mexican cartels. But in July, an informant tipped off the DEA about Allawi’s AlphaBay shop and sent the investigation spinning in a whole new direction.
The San Antonio office didn’t do cybercrime. Sure, they had heard of Silk Road. But to the DEA agents in Texas, the dark web might as well have been Baghdad—a faraway land “out of sight, out of mind,” in the words of one investigator.
Westbrook became the office’s de facto guide, largely because he was one of the few people there to have a vague understanding of what the dark web was. He met with cybersecurity professors at UTSA on how to access Allawi’s account. He was by far the youngest member of the task force; around the office, he was known as “the millennial.”
The agents purchased a MacBook and a VPN subscription to access the dark web. They were floored when they saw DopeBoy210’s shop. Based on the hundreds of comments left by satisfied customers, Allawi was a massive retailer.
Getting a peek at Allawi’s online operations was relatively easy. To arrest him for it, the DEA would need to definitively link Allawi to his AlphaBay account, which meant they’d need to buy drugs from him. And to do that, they’d need bitcoins.
This had daunting implications for a governmental office, Westbrook realized. The task force might buy $1,000 worth of the volatile currency, only to wake up the next day and find their wallet’s value down to $900 or up to $1,100. Agency bigwigs didn’t love schemes deviating from tradition, investigators say. They certainly were reluctant to become bitcoin speculators. “It was a headache,” Westbrook says. (But not unheard of: As part of a parallel investigation into AlphaBay, DEA agents in 2016 bought drugs using bitcoin. Before that, they purchased crypto as they sought to shut down Silk Road.)
In the meantime, the agents kept pounding away at the work they knew how to do: tailing suspects and working informants. As the new year began, the task force persuaded a judge to authorize the GPS tracking and tapping of Uno’s and Allawi’s phones, and later Al Salihi’s. In March, Westbrook followed Uno from Allawi’s house to a post office, where Uno delivered three boxes and a trash bag stuffed with what appeared to be envelopes. After that, postal inspectors would periodically intercept mail and packages intended for Allawi.
When he wasn’t tailing members of Allawi’s crew, Westbrook worked at a DEA desk that was unofficially assigned to rookies due to its awkward position in the middle of the open room. During the investigation, someone hung a handwritten sign that read MILLENNIAL ISLAND.
Westbrook usually sat alone, but on March 17 the rest of the task force was peering over his shoulder as he logged in to AlphaBay. The team had gotten the green light from DC: They could buy bitcoins and purchase drugs from Allawi. Navigating to the DopeBoy210 page, Westbrook bought 500 Adderall pills for $1,400 worth of bitcoins, and an ounce of cocaine for $1,200. He listed a mailbox at UTSA and finished the order.
About a week later, he drove to the campus to retrieve the package. Looking giddy under a beige ball cap, he inserted a key into mailbox number 825. The drugs were inside. There were only 447 pills and no cocaine, so Westbrook initiated a dispute with AlphaBay (which ended in favor of Allawi). But this was a detail. What mattered was that the agents had conducted an undercover buy on the dark web. The San Antonio DEA had entered a world its agents barely knew existed a year before.
Allawi’s profits were rolling in, but they were still in the form of bitcoins, and he needed to convert them to cash. On LocalBitcoins.com, a bitcoin exchange platform, he met Kunal Kalra, a cheerful Californian who favored Mao collar shirts and a gold bitcoin pendant—a sign of his unwavering dedication to cryptocurrency. Kalra ran a bitcoin ATM out of a cigar shop in Los Angeles. Allawi began visiting the shop to exchange his bitcoin earnings for cash, and paid Kalra a fee for his help. By the fall of 2016, the two men moved their arrangement online. They transferred more than half a million dollars in total.
With plenty of cash, Allawi went on a buying spree. He made a $30,000 down payment for a two-story slab house in a residential San Antonio neighborhood just south of UTSA. “I didn’t know how much money he was making until he came to Houston,” Goss says. The Texas native accompanied his friend on multiple trips to luxury car dealerships in the city that fall. In October 2016, Allawi set his sights on a white 2013 Maserati GranTurismo, which cost $49,000. He began pulling wads of bills from a Louis Vuitton backpack and handing them to a salesman. Goss worried that paying cash would attract attention, but his friend refused to take a loan and owe interest. “Why am I gonna fucking pay?” Allawi said.
A few months later, Allawi took one of his cars in for an oil change. When mechanics lifted the car on a hoist, they found a curious black box affixed to the undercarriage. It was a tracking device. Allawi had it promptly removed. He was disturbed by the discovery, but not enough to stop. “I needed money, and things had to keep going,” he says.
Otherwise, though, Allawi was on top of the world. By spring of 2017, he had the cars, the luxury sneakers, and the bottle service. He was even in talks to open a local franchise for a juice bar chain. Ever the party guy, on March 23 he flew his crew out on a trip to Las Vegas. Allawi, Uno, Robinson, and Goss walked into Drai’s, a gigantic nightclub known as one of the most expensive in town. Lil Wayne was performing as the group huddled in the VIP area. Allawi was wearing a $2,000 suit that he’d nabbed on a whim at Caesars Palace—they all were, courtesy again of the boss. Allawi passed around an enormous bottle of Veuve Clicquot, a flashy move that didn’t go unnoticed by the rapper onstage. “I don’t know who these n––––s is, but I need to be partying with them,” Wayne shouted, according to Goss.
The four men snapped selfies, sticking out their tongues like a bunch of eager teenagers. They were having the time of their lives.
While Allawi’s crew partied in Vegas, a man in the Midwest named Vincent Jordahl was recovering from a close brush with death. He’d snorted a blue powder—fentanyl—and collapsed on his living room floor. His mother found him and performed CPR before medics revived him with Narcan, a fentanyl antidote. He was taken to a hospital in Grand Forks, North Dakota. On March 25, city medics would rush to the home of another man, named Orlando Flores, who’d also overdosed on fentanyl-laced pills and also survived. The tablets originated in the same package, sent by Allawi sometime in March.
Less than a month later, on the East Coast, two other young men readied for a party of their own. Mark Mambulao and Marcos Villegas were marines stationed at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. It was Friday, April 14, and the duo were starting their weekend with some gin and tonics at a friend’s house in Richlands, about 32 miles north of the base. Around 9:30 pm, Mambulao sent a girlfriend a photo on Snapchat of a friend’s dog chewing his hat.
Then, Villegas pulled some pills out of a small black plastic bag and passed them around. Mambulao had experimented with drugs before, including LSD, mushrooms, ecstasy, and oxycodone, which he would either gobble up or crush and snort. These pills were advertised as OxyContin. Villegas had purchased them directly from an AlphaBay vendor named DopeBoy210. The friends all swallowed the pills at the same time.
About two hours later, Mambulao started to feel sick and passed out on the living room couch, so his friends laid him down in a spare bedroom, making sure he was on his side. When they checked on him later, he wasn’t breathing. The men called 911 and started to perform CPR, but it was too late. In the early hours of April 15, Mambulao died in a Jacksonville hospital. He was just 20 years old.
It turned out that the pill Mambulao ingested contained a lethal dose of fentanyl. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service began looking into his death. Cooperating with the Postal Inspection Service and DEA, the NCIS traced the drugs to Allawi. (Villegas pleaded guilty in 2019 to distributing oxycodone and fentanyl and was sentenced to 10 years in prison; a second marine was also charged in connection with the case.) Why did Mambulao overdose and not the other revelers that night? There was “no real science” informing Allawi’s pill-manufacturing, says Dante Sorianello, then the head of the DEA’s San Antonio office. “Some of these pills probably got very little fentanyl, and some got too much.”
On May 17, a utility worker in a neon-yellow vest and hard hat walked up the driveway to Allawi’s house in Richmond and knocked on the door. “Sorry, power’s out,” he told the occupants. “We’re going to be working on it for a while.” Anyone who’s been in Houston on the cusp of summer knows what these words mean: Without AC, your home is going to turn into a furnace in no time.
Westbrook and Valle, clad in black bulletproof vests, watched from their cars as Uno and Robinson left the house. The utility guy was a DEA agent, and the whole thing was a ruse so they could raid the house without risking any lives. Law enforcement saw fentanyl as a threat to eliminate at all cost, which meant shutting down the drug manufacturing before moving to arrest Allawi.
At 1:38 pm, men sweating profusely in hazmat suits swarmed the house, lending an otherworldly look to this ordinarily quiet neighborhood. The suits were meant to protect the agents from fentanyl, which they thought could incapacitate or even kill them if they simply touched it. They knocked on the door and got no response. They went in.
The search was fruitful. The agents placed their bounty in front of the garage in a spot demarcated by yellow cones. Among other drug paraphernalia, there were two pill presses, cardboard boxes from China containing ingredients, and enough drugs to put Allawi away for a long time: 500 grams of fentanyl powder, 500 grams of meth, 500 grams of cocaine, 10 kilos of fake oxycodone tablets laced with fentanyl, 4 kilos of fake Adderall laced with meth, and 5 kilos of counterfeit Xanax tablets. Agents found a Ruger revolver and a Sig Sauer pistol hidden in a couch in the living room. They walked out of Allawi’s bedroom carrying an AR-15-style assault rifle and a loaded Glock pistol.
As the agents worked, Uno and Robinson drove by the house and realized what was happening. Far from being scared off by the raid, they returned to the scene with Allawi, Westbrook says. As they drove away one last time, all three men tossed their phones out the car window. Soon after, Allawi called Goss from a new number and asked to meet him at a ritzy house he was renting east of Houston. There, he retrieved a bag stuffed with $50,000 in cash, Goss says, and asked his friend to drive him to the airport. The ringleader had decided to hole up in LA, where he had a condo—and an extravagant collection of sneakers—in the upscale Westwood neighborhood.
His operation was unraveling fast. “I’m fucked. It’s over,” he kept repeating in the car. Like any good drug boss, Allawi started planning his escape. He considered hiding in Dallas or California, according to Goss. When things settled, he could go back to Iraq, where the money he’d sent over the years had allowed his family to start a strip mall. He could flee to Mexico and fly out from there.
But for weeks after the raid, there were no cops in sight. Allawi wondered whether he’d dodged a bullet. Eventually he felt secure enough to return to Texas. One evening at the end of June, he and Goss went to a club. The two men sat in the VIP area, a $500 bottle of champagne on the table. But Allawi wasn’t his usual gregarious self. He remained quiet, his glass untouched. The two men drove back from the club in silence. “I feel like I’m a martyr,” Allawi suddenly said. “All my family’s taken care of. If I die tomorrow, it wasn’t in vain.”
Just a few days later, the DEA moved to apprehend Allawi’s team in simultaneous takedowns across Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston; Uno, Robinson, Al Salihi, and Goss were all arrested. So was Kalra, Allawi’s bitcoin guy. Valle was with a SWAT team at Allawi’s gargantuan rental home in the suburbs of Houston. They tried ramming the door down, but Allawi had splurged on a $10,000 reinforced model, Valle says. The team had to break in through a window.
Inside, they found Allawi clad in black pants and a white polo. He told agents they had nothing on him, even as investigators seized a bitcoin wallet, two money counters, 12 burner phones, four small bags of blue chemical binder, and a .45 Colt.
After the DEA agents made clear that they had more than enough evidence, Allawi quieted down. Sitting on the driveway, handcuffed, cross-legged, and slightly disheveled, he looked more like the young Iraqi who’d smoked hookah alongside US contractors than the leader of a drug ring. He rolled onto his left side, curled into a ball on the pavement, and closed his eyes.
In June 2017, a grand jury indicted Allawi for conspiring to distribute fentanyl, meth, and cocaine; possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime; and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, among other charges.
The mountain of evidence against Allawi was overwhelming—so overwhelming, in fact, that Anthony Cantrell, his court-appointed lawyer, said a trial would take months and put a strain on his practice. Instead, Allawi pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl resulting in death or serious bodily injury, and to using a gun during a drug crime. Investigators estimated that Allawi had made at least $14 million off his criminal activities, and had sold at least 850,000 counterfeit pills in 38 states. Sorianello says that Allawi saw the growing market for pills and capitalized on it with his operation. “He was one of the first we saw doing this at large scale,” he says. “He was a pioneer.”
At his sentencing, Allawi adopted a contrite tone. “I messed up. It was a great mistake.” He concluded by asking for mercy, for the US to give him a second chance. But the court showed no such clemency: As part of his plea deal, Allawi was sentenced to 30 years in a federal prison in northern Louisiana; he has since been transferred to a medium-security facility in New York. After that, he will be deported back to Iraq. Uno, Robinson, Al Salihi, and Kalra, meanwhile, all pleaded guilty and received prison sentences ranging from 18 months to 10 years. The judge was more lenient with Goss, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to posses with intent to distribute cocaine, and was sentenced to five years’ probation.
Allawi maintained that if the US had been in the throes of a devastating opioid epidemic while he was running his drug ring, he’d never heard about it, “never heard about overdoses or the damage it can cause.” But it was operations like his—dealers selling counterfeit pills laced with illicitly produced fentanyl—that authorities say contributed to so much death and destruction.
Roughly a month after Allawi’s arrest, authorities took down AlphaBay. But it didn’t do much to relieve the opioid epidemic in the US. More than 106,000 people died of a drug overdose in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—a record high. Dark-web markets, meanwhile, logged $3.1 billion in revenue that year, according to Chainalysis, a research firm that tracks cryptocurrency activity. Revenue dropped last year, thanks in large part to the takedown of another major dark-web bazaar called Hydra, but illegal marketplaces still raked in $1.5 billion.
China provided most of the fentanyl present in the US before 2019, with traffickers shipping the powder through international mail and private package delivery. But controls that China has since imposed have disrupted the flow. Today, Mexican cartels lead the charge, procuring precursor chemicals from China, which can be legally exported, and churning out enough fentanyl to drown the US. The DEA seized the equivalent of 379 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl last year, more than the population of the entire country. Distributors are active everywhere. The agency’s Rocky Mountain office, for example, which covers Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, seized nearly 2 million fentanyl pills.
Sitting in a hip coffee place in Houston last summer, Westbrook pulled out his phone and flipped through pictures of recent fentanyl busts he’d participated in. In mirror images of the takedown of Allawi’s drug house, federal agents in flashy hazmat suits prowl the driveways of nondescript homes. Industrial pill presses sit on the suburban concrete. DEA offices across the country are establishing groups focused on fentanyl investigations, he says. “It’s weird times,” he later told me, reflecting on the destruction that tiny amounts of fentanyl can wreak. “I went from chasing kilos to grams.”
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Texas increases anti-LGBTQ attacks, but anti-fascist victories give reason for hope
The state of Texas has spent 2022 demonizing and attacking LGBTQ people. Whipping up a moral panic with hate speech pulled from corporate media headlines, Texas politicians have introduced dozens of bills criminalizing transgender people. This in turn has led to a steep increase in attacks against LGBTQ people.
But even as the attacks increase, popular movements have shut down the fascists in major cities and small towns alike, often greatly outnumbering them. There is still a long road ahead for Texas anti-fascists, but a few powerful victories give reason for hope.
Hate speech paved the way for fascist violence
The national panic around LGBTQ existence is not an accident, but a coordinated campaign with political ends. Anti-trans and anti-gay hate speech has proliferated across the media. Fox News ran 170 segments attacking trans people in a three-week period between March 17 and April 6.
News anchors are endlessly repeating the lie that children are being “groomed” into being transgender, echoing anti-gay panics and Satanic cult conspiracy theories of decades past. The media is using the most visceral language possible about trans children, including repeating the libelous term “chemical castration,” in order to provoke confusion, fear and hatred against trans people.
Instead of loudly and publicly denouncing the vile rhetoric, “centrist” corporate media have normalized it. Writing for the Texas Observer, Kit O’Connell debunks the New York Times’ false claim that there is a “debate” over transgender health care and exposes the source of the Times’ “debate” as anti-gay hate groups.
Far-right rhetoric against trans people has now spilled over into a full-blown homophobic assault, often dovetailing with racism, sexism and anti-semitism.
This has corresponded with Republican legislators adopting and advocating for these same extreme positions. The Texas Republican Party platform, adopted in June 2022 — right in the middle of Pride Month, no less — declares that “[h]omosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice,” and that they oppose “all efforts to validate transgender identity.”
Republicans scramble over each other to introduce new hate bills
New bills being introduced seek to criminalize trans existence by restricting what sports teams children can play in, designating wearing clothing for the “opposite” gender as inherently sexual, restricting or outright banning health care access for trans people, and more.
Most of the previous year’s proposed transphobic legislation died in the House, apart from HB 25, which essentially bans transgender children from sports. 2023’s HB 23 would expand the restrictions passed last year. The bill sows distrust of birth certificates themselves, only accepting them as a valid proof of sex if the gender marker was “entered at or near the time of the student’s birth” or corrected due to a clerical error.
Texas legislators are trying to redefine and criminalize “drag” through HB 643 and HB 708. Both bills classify venues with drag shows as “sexually oriented businesses” and define “drag” as “a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment.”
The bill’s definition of “drag” is so broad that it would not just encompass drag artists, but all transgender performers. If passed, any performance which includes a trans person onstage at all — the national anthem before a sports game, a string quartet performing at a wedding, a ballet performance, an open mic night — would be classified like strip clubs, and the owners would be subjected to criminal penalties if a minor is present. This is not to mention the harm this would cause to actual drag performers, who are under constant threat of violence across the country.
Far-right legislators are also seeking to do away entirely with health care for trans children. HB 42 would expand the state’s definition of child abuse to include providing gender-affirming care to a child/teen and would make it a felony for any health care provider to provide this care to a child/teen.
Studies show that denying gender-affirming care to youths can increase depression and suicide rates by up to 300 percent in just six months. If HB 42 passes, it will undoubtedly lead to higher suicide rates among trans youths, while anyone who attempts to help obtain medical care for them will be charged with heavy criminal penalties.
The number of similar bills is proliferating like the heads of a hydra. HB 42, HB 122, HB 41, HB 436, and HB 672 all prohibit health care for transgender youth. These are dozens of bills targeting LGBTQ people — especially youth — businesses that host them, medical professionals that treat them, education that acknowledges LGBTQ existence, and even parents that support their own children.
Republican politicians are scrambling over each other to prove who can introduce the most anti-LGBTQ legislation.
The executive branch of Texas is weaponizing every aspect of state bureaucracy against trans people. Attorney General Ken Paxton has attempted to form a list of all trans people in Texas using driver’s license info, and earlier in the year, worked with Governor Greg Abbott to order that parents of trans children be investigated for child abuse.
Texas legislators are increasingly bringing self-described fascists into the halls of power. State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) hired self-described Christian nationalist Jake Neidert as his legislative director. Neidert has called for the public execution of people for bringing children to drag shows. Neidert’s twin sister Kelly, a self-described “Christian fascist,” is the founder of the hate group Protect Texas Kids, which is responsible for attacks on Texas drag shows.
Fascist attacks repelled in city after city
The legislative attack on trans people and the media bombardment of hate speech also serve another sinister purpose: They have activated a network of fascist groups against LGBTQ people. Out of 141 protests against LGBTQ events across the country, 20 of the protests took place in Texas, the most in the nation. North Carolina came in second with 10 protests.
Fascist groups have served as the “muscle” to directly shut down venues friendly to LGBTQ people. But they have met large protests wherever they have appeared. Almost always outnumbered, the far right has found no major allies in Texas cities or towns.
On July 10, Protect Texas Kids protested a drag show in Houston. One hundred and fifty people showed up in 103-degree heat to defend the venue against 18 fascists, a ratio of 8 to 1.
On Dec. 13, the fascist militia, This Is Texas Freedom Force, tried to shut down a holiday drag show in San Antonio. They were met with over 300 pro-LGBTQ counter-protesters, outnumbered 4 to 1.
On Dec. 17, a group of openly fascist organizations tried to stop a drag show in Grand Prairie near Dallas. They were outnumbered by 75 counter-protesters, who successfully defended the event.
In other cities where shows have taken place — such as Katy and Pflugerville — fascists sporting neo-Nazi symbols have disrupted shows without being able to shut them down. Other shows in Amarillo and Temple saw protests, but even in smaller Texas cities, drag shows are gaining popularity and are defended by pro-LGBTQ groups.
Sadly, the threat of violence has forced some venues to cancel events: Shows in San Antonio (Dec. 3), Austin (Dec. 18) and Denton (Sep. 18) were all shut down under threat of violence.
Notably, many of the canceled shows are in cities where anti-fascism is strong, and were shut down by business owners before the community could rally to their defense. All across the state, when venues refuse to cancel a show and the community mobilizes in support, the fascists are exposed as completely impotent and forced to retreat.
Only the people can stop fascism
LGBTQ Texans will ring in the New Year in a state trying to criminalize every aspect of queer existence. Right-wing politicians, working hand-in-hand with openly bigoted media, have created a hostile legal atmosphere for trans people. But the third prong of this assault, the mobilized fascist militias, have met fierce resistance in every corner of the state.
There is nothing settled about the fight for trans rights in Texas. The consciousness of the state has shifted to the left in recent years, even as the state government has shifted even more to the far right. Texas has been singled out for fascist attacks on LGBTQ people not because its right-wing government is so powerful, but precisely because its form of extreme class rule is so unstable and unpopular.
The corporate-backed Texas far right fears that if its system of bigotry and extreme oppression falters, it will lose control of the state to the millions of people crying out for a better system. It is imperative that progressive people all across the state prove the bigots’ greatest fears correct!
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🚨🚒🚨🚑🚨🚓🚨🚒🚨🚑🚨🚓🚨🚒🚨🚑🚨🚓🚨
on one hand, the fact that the local (volunteer) ambulance service, local (volunteer) fire department, and town cops all line up to escort the JUNIOR HIGH, GIRLS volleyball team back into town after coming in second at state, with every siren blaring and every light flashing is.... it's sweet. My high school damn near had as many students as this entire town has residents and we didn't get shit like that when we *won* state competitions... so seeing this kind of fired up support is just kinda neat.
on the other hand, stepping outside to potty dogs at night, in the rain, in the dark, and suddenly having EVERY FUCKING EMERGENCY SIREN IN TOWN BLARE TO LIFE about half a kilometer from my house is just the tiniest bit SHOCKING!
also... pretty sure neither the Jr High nor the High school here have any sort of academic competition type team or anything, so that's sort of sad, to see this level of... fervency and obsession -- energy. yeah, we'll, uh, go with energy... for the sports ball teams is just a little... well, it smacks of Texas is what it is.
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Who is “Little Jane Doe” found in St. Louis, MO 1983?
Detective Joe Burgoon remembers every detail of the day he first came across little Jane Doe; the cold chill of the basement that kept the smell of her decomposing corpse at bay, the trails of blood on the floor from where her murderer dragged and disposed of her, her chipped crimson-red nail polish that matched the color of the nylon rope used to bound her hands, and the latin word “Domi” or Home etched into the stone above the doorway of the forsaken building.
It was a mild February day in 1983 when two men stumbled into an abandoned apartment building in search of a pipe wrench to fix their broken down vehicle. Failing to locate anything of use on the main floor the men ventured into the dark, cold basement in hopes to better their luck. With no range of vision, one man lights up a cigarette to brighten up their surroundings only to see a gruesome scene; a headless, bound body that was sitting among rubble, discarded like trash.
When officers arrive they had no way of identifying the body without the head, which lead them to believe the corpse was possibly a prostitute or drug addict that lived in a nearby housing project. While searching the vicinity of the building for the head, the rest of the body is taken to the local medical examiner’s office to search for any clues as to where she came from. During the autopsy it was revealed that their “Jane Doe” was not a drug addict who overdosed or a prostitute who was murdered after hopping into the car with the wrong person; she was a little girl between the ages of seven and twelve. She was of African American descent and through DNA testing done by the Smithsonian institute it was concluded that she had spent most of, if not all of her life in one of ten southeastern states: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee and the Carolina’s.
Once it was determined that their Jane Doe was a child, local law enforcement went to every school district in the vicinity of where her body was located trying to determine her identity; when they found no missing students it further proved that the DNA testing was correct about her origins. Despite the fact that it is believed she was not a local to St. Louis, Missouri it is believed that her killer was. Due to the placement of her remains and the fact that the building was nowhere near any major freeways or roads it is believed that her murderer could have possibly been a transient with knowledge of local abandoned buildings.
Joe Burgoon, like countless others, remember Little Jane Doe for the person she could have been and will continue to fight to keep her memory alive.
#crime#criminology#journalism#psychology#writing#murder#unsolved murder#unsolved case#unsolved mysteries#true crime#unsolved true crime#true crime community#tc community
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Day 5
Finally have enough internet for a real update! Getting out of Texas never felt so sweet for a few reasons; One, it’s closer to temperatures that I can handle (Did I mention that hEDS/HSD comes with heat intolerance?), Two, I’ve already had to do a little camper repair. The high winds between Lake Colorado City State Park and Lubbock were just too much, and only after I pulled up to Prairie Dog Town (Yes, I go to every Prairie Dog town I find near me on the map! You should too), did I notice almost half the fiberglass on one side of the camper had been ripped away. Oh boy!
Seeing that I’ll be in the pacific northwest on part of this trip, this just will not do. After a few hours and some very unhelpful Lowe’s employees, I got what I needed to “fix” it. Good thing I’m crafty! I laid heavy duty RV roofing tape down, then used RTV silicone seal to make it water proof. This should hold the rest of the trip – but I’m kind of expecting the other side to blow away at some point. Fingers crossed!
Just like new. Right? RIGHT???
Now for the stuff that’s really important: PRAIRIE DOGS!
My first National Park stop was Aztec Ruins National Monument, not as much ruins as abandoned by the various tribes, like the Hopi and Zia, that lived that centuries ago. My favorite part was the great room in the largest ceremonial Kiva.
I earned my first Junior Ranger badge of the trip! I dedicate this badge to my friend and donor Jason-Fo, aka, Vacation Jason. Jason is one of the kindest, most authentic people I have ever known. We met in 2011 when we both served as chaperones on an environmental education trip taking honors students to the Hawaiian Islands on a 35 day course. We went back again, and have remained friends. Jason, thank you for your friendship and your support of my fundraiser! Mahalo nui loa. This badge is for you!
My next stop was two nights at Mesa Verde National Park. What a surprise it was! I didn’t know much about it, but wow, it’s beautiful for so much more than the many, many dwellings it’s known for. The story is very much the same as Aztec Ruins; the various tribes that lived here for so long eventually leftover time to reach ‘greener pastures’, since they sustenance and economy was driven by agriculture.
I did a ranger lead tour of Long House, the second largest dwelling in the park. There are 150 rooms here, and many families lived in an impressively run community. Rooms stacked on top of rooms, we used ladders to ascent upwards just like they did hundreds of years ago. After moving on, different tribes ended up in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
I was lucky that at the end of my second day there, members of the Ute tribe performed drums, dancing, and storytelling at their ancestral lands of the park. I also ruined some people’s day by telling them they couldn’t gather firewood in the park. The guy said, “It’s not for a campfire, it’s for, like, a burning man.” I will be honest, I short circuited there for a moment, because although I’ve heard a lot of weird things working and visiting the parks, that was a new one. I told him that it didn’t really matter what it’s for, you can’t take wood, plants, flowers, anything from a National Park, everything is protected. Luckily, he didn’t seem very sharp so he didn’t argue, and when I asked them to put the sticks back in the wood, they dropped them, and looked supremely bewildered as they walked away. Score one for ya girl.
I earned my second Junior Ranger Badge of the trip here. I dedicate this one to my dearest Shelby, who I saw crawl out of the birth canal at zero years old (well, not really, but don’t tell Shelby that). Thank you for being the first person (*that I’m NOT married to) to donate to this fundraiser. You are a great person to have in my life because you are driven, strong, honest, and intelligent. Your love for life is something to aspire to. You are far better quality than this terribly unfocused picture!
I will update as soon as I have service/wifi again. I have no idea how often that will be! Such is life on the road.
Haylan
#road trip for a cause#road trip#ehlers danlos#ehlers danlos awareness#ehlers danlos society#ehlers danlos syndrome#hypermobility spectrum disorder#HSD#hEDS#chronic illness#mesa verde#mesa verde national park#national park road trip#national park#aztec ruins#aztec ruins national monument#camper#teardrop#camper trouble
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Who was Salvador Ramos ( Robb Elementary School shooting suspect ) Wiki, Bio, Age, Crime, Arrest, Incident details, Investigations and More Facts
Salvador Ramos Biography Salvador Ramos Wiki
An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, killing 14 boys and a teacher before being killed by police, Gov. Greg Abbott said.
Suspect Identified
The suspected shooter, identified as Salvador Ramos, allegedly shot his grandmother around noon local time before driving to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a possible handgun and rifle, according to Abbott and ABC News.
#Uvalde alleged shooter. Hispanic male, 18 y/o Salvador Ramos. The horrific crime resulted in 14 dead, & 16 injured (last reported). He also murdered his grandmother. This story will disappear quickly bc he's of legal age to buy a rifle & he's not a white male. pic.twitter.com/fhgFTRq1ap
— Foxy's Crime Scenes (@thewaryfox) May 24, 2022
“It is believed that he exited his vehicle and entered Uvaldes Robb Elementary with a gun and also had a rifle, but that has not yet been confirmed,” Abbott told reporters at a conference call. independent press in Abilene, adding that the killer had traveled to Uvalde. High school.
"He shot 14 students in a horrific and incomprehensible manner and killed a teacher. Mr. Ramos, the shooter, is himself dead and the officers who returned fire reportedly killed him.
Besides the 15 victims, including a boy and a girl, 15 other children and two adults were injured in the shooting, according to hospital officials.
Fourteen children and an adult were taken to Uvalde Medical Center, while a 10-year-old girl and a 66-year-old woman, both in critical condition, were taken to University Health San Antonio, the only level 1 trauma center which includes adults and adults also children of the region.
"Texans across the state mourn the victims of this senseless crime and the community of Uvalde. Cecilia and I mourn this terrible loss and call on all Texans to come together to show our unwavering support for all who are suffering," said Abbott said in a statement.
“Thank you to the brave rescuers who worked to finally make Robb Elementary School safe. I have directed the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers to work with local law enforcement to fully investigate this crime.
Robb Elementary School, which is about 60 miles east of Mexico's southern border and about 80 miles west of San Antonio, was closed around 11:43 a.m. local time after gunshots were heard in the area, the school posted on Facebook.
Active Gunman
About half an hour later, the school reported an "active gunman" at the scene, who was in custody at 1:06 p.m., the Uvalde Police Department confirmed on Facebook.
The police are to hold a press conference at 5 p.m. local hour.
All students were housed and a meeting center was established at the Willie DeLeon Civic Center.
Tuesday's shooting is the deadliest in Texas history and comes four years after 10 people were shot dead at Santa Fe High School near Houston.
The mass shooting comes just 10 days after 18-year-old Payton Gendron shot and killed 10 people at a convenience store in Buffalo, New York.
Read the full article
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Four-Bedroom Townhomes in San Antonio
When it comes to college student housing options, getting four-bedroom townhomes in San Antonio is the best choice for some. Getting four-bedroom townhomes can be an affordable and spacious choice for those students who are willing to live with roommates. Sharing the rent between four or more students can make this option more financially feasible, especially in sought-after areas close to campus. In addition to affordability, four-bedroom townhomes offer better amenities, especially at Villas at College Park. With four bedrooms, students can have their own private space and potentially even a dedicated study area. However, living with multiple roommates may not be ideal for everyone, so it's important to weigh the pros and cons before deciding. However, if you've made up your mind, visit the Villas at College Park.
San Antonio, TX, Thriving Arts Scene
San Antonio boasts a thriving arts scene, with museums, theaters, and art galleries offering various cultural experiences. One of the most popular sports in the area is the San Antonio River Walk, with walkways along the river and lined shops, restaurants, and public art installations. The city enjoys a warm subtropical climate with mild winters and hot summers, perfect for year-round outdoor activities such as swimming, biking, hiking, and nature exploration. San Antonio is also close to the Texas Hill Country, which offers rolling hills, wineries, and outdoor activities for easy weekend getaways. The city is also known for its friendly and welcoming atmosphere, diverse culinary scene, and family-friendly environment.
Brackenridge Park
Brackenridge Park, located in San Antonio, Texas, is a historical landmark that covers over 343 acres of land. This park is the oldest and most prominent in the area, providing visitors with various activities and attractions suitable for people of different ages and interests. A major attraction within the park is the zoo, home to over 3,500 animals that represent over 750 species from around the globe. Moreover, visitors can explore the beautiful Japanese-style gardens, koi ponds, waterfalls, and traditional pagodas at the Japanese Tea Garden, also known as Sunken Gardens. The park also offers walking, jogging, biking trails, a lake, paddleboat rentals, and a historic outdoor amphitheater.
Operators Oppose Proposed Ban on Horse-Drawn Carriages
Neighbors in northwest San Antonio are concerned about a partially collapsed retaining wall near Cedar Creek Golf Course. The Bexar County Fire Marshall is monitoring the area for safety. The neighbor, who lives across the canyon from the collapse, said that everyone in the area knew something was amiss and that the collapse appeared to have happened all at once. The hole in the southern wall is nothing compared to collapse damage affecting the entry ramp of the complex. The neighbor believes the hole in the ground is due to the porous limestone, which is not adequately drained. The hole in the southern wall is not the first failure in the northwest-side area, and the residents wonder what steps are being taken to address the danger before it worsens.
Link to maps
Brackenridge Park
3700 N St Mary's St, San Antonio, TX 78209, United States
Get on US-281 N from Broadway and E Hildebrand Ave
5 min (1.6 mi)
Continue on US-281 N. Take I-410 W and I-10 W/US-87 N to Frontage Rd. Take exit 557 from I-10 W/US-87 N
13 min (13.5 mi)
Take UTSA Boulevard to Casina Run
7 min (3.4 mi)
Villas at College Park
7507 Casina Run, San Antonio, TX 78249, United States
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CWS Retained by South San Antonio School District for Security Window Film Installation Project
SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The South San Antonio Independent School District [SSAISD] has hired Commercial Window Shield for a safety and security window film installation project for all 13 school buildings in their school system.
The project involves the installation of a clear 8-mil film with a wet-glaze attachment system on all ground-floor entrance doors and windows. In total, 45,000 sq. ft. of safety and security window film will be installed on the buildings’ glass.
The work at SSAISD is scheduled to begin this spring and will be on-going throughout the year.
Funding for the project comes from the state of Texas’s School Safety Standards Formula initiative, which allocated $400 million to public schools for enhanced safety. The initiative was sparked by a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in May 2022 during which 19 students and two teachers were killed and 17 students wounded by a lone gunman who entered the school through a building door.
The SSAISD security window film installation project continues a national trend in which school districts are acting to protect their students and employees from potential violent building intruders with the installation of safety and security window film in vulnerable glass entry areas.
Commercial Window Shield has been at the forefront of the school security movement over the past decade. Including this project, the company has protected the glass in more than 360 school buildings in 12 states.
Elsewhere, the company has completed safety and security film projects at Geneva, Minooka and Lake Zurich school districts in suburban Chicago; Calvert, St. Mary’s and Carroll County [Md.] Public Schools; Mechanicsburg and Bath Local Schools, near Lima, Ohio; Bellmore and Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools, N.Y.; Hartford, Glastonbury and Simsbury school districts in Connecticut; Norfolk and Henry County in Virginia; Beaverton, Ore.; Comanche Public Schools, Comanche, Okla., Lansdale, Pa. and Katy and Rockwell schools districts in Texas.
With more than 40 years of experience, Commercial Window Shield is one of the nation’s leading security and solar control window film installers. Among its many projects, the company has protected windows at the U.S. Capitol, FBI headquarters, Pentagon, all House of Representative buildings, O’Hare International Airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Willis Tower [former Sears Tower], Denver Mint, Grand Central Terminal and the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.
Source URL:- https://insiderspirit.com/cws-retained-by-south-san-antonio-school-district-for-security-window-film-installation-project/
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Left Voice interviewed a 23-year-old immigrant, factory worker, and student, who told us about his experience crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S. and about the life of Latin American youth in the United States.
Immigration laws in the United States are discriminatory and racist. Right now in Texas they want to pass SB4 which makes it a second-degree felony with a penalty of two to 20 years in prison to cross into the state from a foreign country at any place other than a legal port of entry. While moving forward with this right-wing legislation, since March 2021, under the Biden administration, several tactics have been implemented, including sending state police and National Guard to different parts of the state’s 1,200-mile border with Mexico; arresting immigrants and charging them with breaking and entering. A complete militarization. While the Republicans with Trump continue with their anti-immigration rhetoric. Democrats and Republicans want to create an internal enemy: the immigrant. Entire families are escaping poverty, poverty generated by the foreign debts that these countries have with the United States and international organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank.
This interview is to give a voice to immigrants in the United States to begin to unite and fight for equal rights between natives and foreigners.
….
I decided to travel to the United States on March 21, 2021, after the pandemic.
The economy of Ecuador was bad. I did not see much future. The United States was a good option to look for a new opportunity. I wanted to go to college.
It was not because I wanted to or because it was my dream to go to the United States. It was necessity.
I was driven by the desire to help my family, to be able to help my mother and my brothers and sisters.
Crossing the border was a seven-day journey, where I was afraid for my life. I left the international airport in Guayaquil. I made two stopovers in Panama and Mexico. I arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon. When I left, I was intercepted by two “coyotes” [migrant smugglers]. At 6 p.m. that same day, I went from Mexico City to Monterrey and then to Piedras Negras. The whole trip was by bus. From there I arrived at a motel in Piedras Negras, and the next day I went to a bodega.
I arrived on Monday at this bodega, where there were seven men plus three coyotes or guards to watch over the people.
As you see in the movies, there are drugs and weapons. I saw the same thing in these warehouses.
The wineries are old houses, and we slept on an old sofa. I remember we were near some railroad tracks.
I crossed the border on a Thursday night at 9 p.m.. The crossing was three hours. I crossed the Rio Bravo, a good area to hide, because there is a river, scenery, reeds. We were still on foot.
It took us about five minutes to cross the river. I had to take off all my clothes (I was only in my boxers), and we put my clothes in a plastic bag.
After crossing the river, there was a chain of five people in the desert along with three coyotes. The coyotes told us that we had to separate in order to cross the border.
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Your College Journey Starts Here Experience TXST Student Housing
Your story begins at The Grove at San Marcos, offering the finest TXST Student Housing facility. Located just minutes from campus, this spacious San Marcos apartment complex provides a complete student lifestyle package.
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