HURRICANE HARVEY: Bait shop owner’s insurance payout thwarted by a typo
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Autopsy: Teen used cobra to commit suicide
Toronto van attack: 9 dead, injuries reported
HURRICANE HARVEY: Bait shop owner’s insurance payout thwarted by a typo
Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gives birth to baby boy
Florida judge does not return to courtroom after berating frail inmate who died 3 days
Autopsy: Teen used cobra to commit suicide
Published: Thursday, November 12, 2015 @ 6:47 PM Updated: Friday, November 13, 2015 @ 3:16 AM By:
Tony Plohetski
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American-Statesman Staff, KVUE News
Monocled cobra found near the Lowe's Home Improvement store in North Austin early Friday morning. The snake is linked to the death of an 18-year-old man from Temple.
An 18-year-old man’s death has been ruled a suicide after he was found in a North Austin parking lot in July with multiple cobra bites, according to an autopsy report obtained Thursday by the American-Statesman.
Grant Thompson had “multiple separate bites” on each arm, and the bite sites showed no evidence that he tried to pull away from the snake as it struck, the autopsy said. The bites “appeared to be intentional injection sites,” and Thompson “had a history of suicidal ideation,” the report said.
Thompson was found on July 14 suffering from cardiac arrest inside a vehicle outside a hardware store near Interstate 35.
He had another snake and several tarantulas in the back of his car, which also had an empty container that housed the cobra. For several days, animal control officials looked for the missing snake, and a driver eventually found it on the I-35 frontage road near the store.
The autopsy report said cobra venom blocks nerve transmissions, leading to altered mental status and eventual paralysis. Symptoms can then lead to respiratory failure and death within 30 minutes.
Thompson worked at the Fish Bowl Pet Express in Temple, a business his mother, Seleese Thompson-Mann, owns and had planned for Thompson to take over. Thompson lived in an apartment attached to the pet store.
A trip to the Austin Zoo at the age of 4 sparked Thompson’s passion for animals. He rarely left the house without an animal in his hands and took animals to church each Sunday to share with classes, his obituary said.
He became a young animal expert, who rescued several animals and often was sought for advice on caring for animals.
“Grant died surrounded by animals that intrigued and fascinated him,” said the obituary.
Published: Monday, April 23, 2018 @ 5:21 PM By:
Cox Media Group National Content Desk
Emergency services close Yonge Street in Toronto after a van mounted a sidewalk crashing into a crowd of pedestrians on Monday, April 23, 2018. The van apparently jumped a curb Monday in the intersection in Toronto and struck the pedestrians and fled the scene before it was found and the driver was taken into custody, Canadian police said. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press via AP)(Aaron Vincent Elkaim/AP)
Aaron Vincent Elkaim/AP
TORONTO — A van apparently jumped onto a sidewalk Monday at a busy intersection in Toronto and struck down pedestrians before the vehicle was found and the driver taken into custody, Canadian police said.
HURRICANE HARVEY: Bait shop owner’s insurance payout thwarted by a typo
Published: Monday, April 23, 2018 @ 9:49 AM By:
Eric Dexheimer, Austin American-Statesman
Mary Ann Heiman purchased windstorm insurance for her property along the causeway between Aransas Pass and Port Aransas, believing her business was covered when Hurricane Harvey destroyed the property. However, later, when she placed a claim with the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA), she was denied citing an inverted address number. Heiman stands on the concrete platform where the business once stood, on Thursday April 20, 2018, in Port Aransas, TX.(AMANDA VOISARD / AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
AMANDA VOISARD / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
PORT ARKANSAS, Texas — Mary Ann Heiman opened her bait shop on the the causeway that crosses Redfish Bay to Port Aransas in 2011. From the outside, 1950 Hwy 361 was nothing fancy.
“The building was just an old metal building that had sat here since the 1980s,” she said. “It was basically held together with nails and glue and love and duct tape.” The real value of Offshore Adventures was the equipment inside, the tanks and freezers Heiman needed to hold the crabs, shrimp, mud minnows and mullet that anglers bought in their pursuit of the Texas coast’s rich lode of redfish, trout and drum.
A resident of the area on and off since her 1950s childhood there, Heiman knew the wild weather that occasionally swept in from the Gulf and the havoc it could leave behind. Last July she purchased a policy from the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association to cover $60,000-worth of business personal property inside 1590 Hwy. 361 from high wind damage. It cost $679.
When Heiman was allowed back into the area a few days later, her bait shop had disappeared, the splintered debris of her livelihood hurled inland by the Category 4 winds. A group of wooden pylons roughly representing the outline of the shop poked out of the sand like a mouthful of broken teeth.
It was only after the adjuster for the windstorm insurance association went out to the site and agreed the record winds had destroyed her bait shop that it was discovered Heiman’s insurance agent had accidentally transposed two of the numbers in Offshore Adventures’ street address. In letters and phone calls, he asked TWIA to correct the typo so Heiman could collect her due and rebuild the business.
The association refused. Heiman’s policy for 1590 Hwy 361 did not cover 1950 Hwy 361, representatives explained. Her claim for the money she needed to restart her bait shop was stamped “denied.”
Circuit Court Judge Merrilee Ehrlich will not return to the bench after her treatment of Sandra Twiggs, 59, who appeared before her last week on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge, Broward Chief Administrative Judge Jack Tuter said Saturday, according to WFOR.
“In light of recent events we have decided Judge Ehrlich will be told not to return to the courthouse as her retirement is effective June 30,” Tuter said, according to The Associated Press. “I will be working this weekend to find a substitute to cover Judge Ehrlich’s (family court) division.”
During the first appearance, Twiggs, who was in a wheelchair, explained to Ehrlich that she suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and needed breathing treatments, according to WFOR.
First appearance hearings are streamed online and recorded.
“Ma’am, don’t even say yes. Just listen,” Ehrlich said. “I’m not here to talk about your breathing treatments.”
Ehrlich released Twiggs without bond. Twiggs died Wednesday in her sleep.
