Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 258, Ed. 1 Friday, April 17, 2015 Page: 1 of 100
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INSIDE TODAY
ALSO INSIDE
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Stewart returns to Guyer to prepare for Titans / Sports, IB
Same-sex couples share
stories ahead of hearing
National, 4A
Argyle girls qualify for first state golf tournament / Sports, IB
Denton Record-Chronicle
An edition of JJaUa^Portmtg
DentonRC.com
Vol. Ill, No. 258 / 22 pages, 3 sections
Friday, April 17, 2015
One dollar
Denton, Texas
Sheriff to attend memorial
After two decades, Travis to return to site of Oklahoma City bombing
time and still a fairly
young agent with the
Drug Enforcement
Administration,
signed to the Fort
Worth office.
‘We got the call,
probably about 9:15,
or my bosses did, and
told us, ‘Hey, you all are going up there,’”
Travis said.
He and his fellow special agents took
their personal vehicles and went imme-
diately without packing for any sort of
extended trip. They didn’t know at the
time they had a three-week mission
ahead of them.
Upon arrival, his team quickly dis-
covered how bad the attack was.
“It was horrible,” Travis said. ‘You
just can’t even fathom walking around
the comer of some of these buildings
and seeing this building that has just
been cratered in two.”
Five of his DEA co-workers were in
the building that morning. Travis and
his team began the search for them but
found a much bigger job inside the
wreckage.
He recalls rounding comers and
finding body parts that had to be recov-
ered, as well as the hundreds of injured
By Brian Scott
NBC 5 Denton County reporter
Denton County Sheriff Will Travis
will return this weekend to the site of a
horror that shaped his career and fife.
On April 19,1995, Travis was one of
the emergency workers who responded
to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
According to the FBI, at 9:02 a.m.
that Wednesday morning, a Ryder
truck packed with 5,000 pounds of ex-
plosives rigged as a bomb went off in
front of the building. The blast killed
168 people, the youngest 4 months old,
and injured hundreds.
Travis was in his early 30s at the
• r
as-
Travis
Rick Bowmer/AP file photo
An Oklahoma City police car decorated with the words “We will never for-
get” and a small American flag sits near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Build-
ing in Oklahoma City on April 24,1995.
See TRAVIS on 2A
Group’s
forum
widens
scope
TODAY
IN DENTON
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Partly cloudy, chance
of showers and storms
High: 79
Low: 64
Three-day forecast, 2A
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INSIDE TODAY
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Denton Neighborhood
Alliance challenges
hopefuls with queries
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By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe
Staff Writer
pheinkel-wolfe @ dentonrc.com
Candidates fielded questions of neigh-
borhood concerns for nearly two hours
Thursday night at a fomm hosted by the
Denton Neighborhood Alliance.
Moderators Karen DeVinney and Pa-
trice Lyke worked through seven ques-
tions that ran the gamut from the general
to the arcane, from concerns about neigh-
borhood impacts from Denton Municipal
Electric’s upgrade and expansion of the lo-
cal electrical grid, to economic incentives,
to a possible lease for a neighborhood-
based police bike patrol.
The Denton Neighborhood Alliance is
an informal consortium of the city’s many
neighborhood groups. DeVinney told the
crowd of about 30 attendees the group
formed several years ago after student
housing encroached on established neigh-
borhoods.
The group has stayed together since
then. In addition to hosting a candidate
forum each spring, it maintains an open
Facebook page, on.fb.me/lDb8Db2, to
share neighborhood issues.
Four of the seven Denton City Council
seats are up for election May 9. The election
includes all four of Denton’s district seats.
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David Minton/DRC
The southbound Interstate 35E frontage road under the bridge just north of Turbeville Road in Hickory Creek is
shown Thursday. This section of the frontage road will soon close and southbound traffic will be routed over the
bridge.
The Denton Record-
Chronicle presents the
2015 Best of Denton
winners in its annual
publication.
Expansion furthers
STATE
In some pockets of Texas,
access to medical care has
grown even worse after a
doctor’s Medicaid and
Medicare fraud scheme
decimated a chain of
rural medical centers that
provided health care not
easily found for hundreds
of miles.
convert the existing exit ramp to an en-
trance ramp.
During the closure, traffic will take
the southbound I-35E frontage road to
the north Lake Dallas Drive bridge and
travel east across the bridge to Lake Dal-
las Drive. Traffic will continue south on
Lake Dallas Drive to the south Lake Dal-
las Drive bridge to access southbound
I-35E.
By Bj Lewis
Staff Writer
blewis @ dentonrc.com
Motorists on Interstate 35E will have
to adjust to more changes starting Satur-
35Express project to
bring more closures,
lane changes Saturday
day.
Road closures and lane shifts are
coming as work on the 35Express pro-
ject continues en route to its projected
mid-2017 date of completion.
“Anytime we change the traffic pat-
tern, it takes commuters a while to ad-
just. As we make the changes, we will
have law enforcement available to help
manage the traffic,” said Kimberly Sims,
spokeswoman for 35Express.
The $1.4 billion expansion will add
general-purpose lanes, managed toll
lanes and frontage road improvements
from Interstate 635 in Dallas County to
U.S. Highway 380 in Denton.
Starting 6 a.m. Saturday, the south-
bound I-35E entrance ramp at Lake Hill
Drive will be reopened as a temporary
exit ramp. In addition, the southbound
I-35E exit ramp 457 near Turbeville
Road will be closed from 9 p.m. Satur-
day to 6 a.m. April 25.
The closure is needed to set concrete
barriers and re-stripe the roadway to
Page 4A
“In order to be able to facilitate con-
struction, we do have to make some
changes to the configuration of the road-
way,” Sims said. “These ramp conver-
sions we are making, those conversions
will last about six months.”
INTERNATIONAL
Y
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See EXPANSION on 10A
See FORUM on 9A
An unprecedented wave
of migrants has headed
for the European Union’s
promised shores over the
past week, with 10,000
people making the trip.
Page 5A
Findings: Spill in Gulf of Mexico worse than reported
ever in the Gulf, albeit still dwarfed by BP’s
massive 2010 gusher.
The roots of the leak he in an underwa-
ter mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan’s
waves in September 2004. That toppled
Taylor’s platform and buried 28 wells un-
der sediment about 10 miles off Louisi-
ana’s coast at a depth of roughly 475 feet.
Without access to the buried wells, tradi-
tional “plug and abandon” efforts wouldn’t
work.
By Michael Kunzelman and Jeff Donn
Associated Press
OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO
Down to just one full-time employee, Taylor
Energy Co. exists for only one reason: to
fight an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that
has gone largely unnoticed, despite creating
miles-long slicks for more than a decade.
The New Orleans-based company has
downplayed the leak’s environmental im-
pact, likening it to scores of minor spills
and natural seeps that the Gulf routinely
absorbs.
But an Associated Press investigation
has revealed evidence that the spill is far
worse than what Taylor — or the govern-
ment — has publicly reported. Presented
with AP’s findings, the Coast Guard pro-
vided a new leak estimate that is about 20
times greater than one recently touted by
the company.
Outside experts say the spill could be
even worse — possibly one of the largest
FIND IT INSIDE
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DEATHS
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GOOD LIVING
The Coast Guard said in 2008 the leak
posed a “significant threat” to the environ-
ment, though there is no evidence oil from
the site has reached shore. Ian MacDon-
ald, a Florida State University biological
oceanography professor and expert wit-
ness in a lawsuit against Taylor, said the
sheen “presents a substantial threat to the
environment” and is capable of harming
birds, fish and other marine fife.
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OPINION
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RELIGION
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SPORTS
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TELEVISION
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WEATHER
Gerald Herbert/AP
An oil sheen drifts from the site of the former Taylor Energy oil rig in the Gulf of
Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana, on March 3L
See SPILL on 9A
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 258, Ed. 1 Friday, April 17, 2015, newspaper, April 17, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124463/m1/1/?rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .