Texas, Deaths | featured news

Even as as President Obama pledged federal assistance to the devastated community, morning rainfall was hampering search and rescue efforts Thursday at the site of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion, which killed as many as 15 people and injured 160.

A father has been charged with murder on Friday after allegedly shooting a drunk driver moments after he plowed into his truck killing his two young sons. David Barajas, 31, and his sons, 12-year-old David Jr. and 11-year-old Caleb, were about 50 yards from their Houston-area home when a car crashed into them on a dark rural road. David Jr. died at the scene, while Caleb died later at a hospital.

Reports that a 3-year-old adopted Russian child died in Texas last month set off a furor here Tuesday, with Russian officials declaring the boy had been abused, although U.S. authorities say the death is still under investigation.

Officials have confirmed the identity of a Texas assistant district attorney shot and killed Thursday near the courthouse where he worked as Chief Prosecutor Mark Hasse, CBS DFW reports.

A high-speed pileup of up to 150 vehicles on a fog-bound Texas interstate highway killed at least two people on Thursday and injured up to 100, a sheriff's spokesman said. The chain reaction of collisions shut down Interstate 10 about 15 miles west of Beaumont for several hours, said Deputy Rod Carroll of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

The owner of a Houston daycare center where four toddlers died in a fire that started after she left the children unattended to go shopping was sentenced on Tuesday to 80 years in prison for a felony murder conviction in one of the deaths.

At least two people were killed on Thursday when a train crashed into a veterans parade float in West Texas, according to an organizer of the event.

A passing motorist found a body in the trunk of a car parked in a ditch in northeast Houston, Texas, The Houston Chronicle reported.

A pickup truck overloaded with passengers veered off a highway and crashed into trees in rural South Texas, killing at least 13 people and leaving 10 injured, authorities said.

A 17-year-old boy in south Texas died after firing a single shot that ricocheted off a butane tank and hit him in the head in McAllen, Texas.