Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 43, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 14, 2017 Page: 3 of 24
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STATE/NATIONAL
3A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Eight die at sweltering Fla. nursing home
eluding carbon monoxide poi-
soning from generators.
He also said investigators will
look into how many windows
were open.
Across the street from the sti-
fling nursing home sat a fully
air-conditioned hospital, Me-
morial Regional.
Broward County said the
nursing home had alerted the
county emergency operations
center on Tuesday that it had
lost power, but when asked if it
had any medical needs or emer-
gencies, it did not request help.
“It’s a sad state of affairs,” the
police chief said. “We all have el-
derly people in facilities, and we
all know we depend on those
people in those facilities to care
for a vulnerable elderly popula-
tion.”
and other heat-related ills, au-
thorities said.
Nursing homes in Florida are
required by state and federal law
to file an emergency plan that
includes evacuation plans for
residents. County officials re-
leased documents showing that
the Hollywood facility was in
compliance with that regulation
and that it held a hurricane drill
with its staff in October.
Calls to the owner and other
officials at the Hollywood home
were not immediately returned,
but the facility’s administrator,
Jorge Carballo, said in a state-
ment that it was “cooperating
fully with relevant authorities to
investigate the circumstances
that led to this unfortunate and
tragic outcome.”
Through a representative,
Carballo told the SunSentinel
newspaper that the home has a
backup generator but that it
does not power the air condi-
tioning.
The nursing home was
bought at a bankruptcy auction
two years ago after its previous
owner went to prison for Medi-
care fraud, according to news re-
ports at the time of the sale.
The Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, which
regulates nursing homes, gives
the Hollywood center a below-
average rating, two stars on its
five-star scale.
By Tim Reynolds
and Terry Spencer
Associated Press
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -
Eight patients at a sweltering
nursing home died after Hurri-
cane Irma knocked out the air
conditioning, raising fears
Wednesday about the safety of
Florida’s 4 million senior citi-
zens amid power outages that
could last for days.
Hollywood Police Chief Tom
Sanchez said investigators be-
lieve the deaths at the Rehabili-
tation Center at Hollywood Hills
were heat-related, and added:
“The building has been sealed
off and we are conducting a
criminal investigation.”
Gov. Rick Scott called on
Florida emergency workers to
immediately check on all nurs-
ing homes to make sure patients
are safe, and he vowed to punish
anyone found culpable in the
deaths.
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When asked why the patients
hadn’t been taken across the
street to Memorial Regional
hospital when temperatures be-
came dangerous, Hollywood
city spokeswoman Rayelin Sto-
rey said, “We can’t get inside the
heads of the staff and the admin-
istrators of this facility.”
The deaths came as people
trying to put their lives back to-
gether in hurricane-stricken
Florida and beyond confronted
a multitude of new hazards in
the storm’s aftermath, including
tree-clearing accidents and le-
thal generator fumes.
Nick Tomecek, Northwest Florida Daily News/AP
Staff members at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and
firefighters from Fort Walton Beach Fire Department load Hurricane Irma evacuees, who had
stayed at Westwood since last Saturday, onto a bus on Wednesday to head back to the their
facility in Mayo, Fla.
“This situation is unfathom-
able,” he said.
The home said in a statement
that the hurricane had knocked
out a transformer that powered
the AC.
The five women and three
men ranged in age from 70 to
distress, firefighters went
through the facility, found three
people dead and evacuated
more than 150 patients to hospi-
tals, many on stretchers or in
wheelchairs, authorities said. By
the afternoon, five more had
died.
Not counting the nursing
home deaths, at least 17 people
in Florida have died under Ir-
ma-related circumstances, and
six more in South Carolina and
Georgia, many of them well af-
ter the storm had passed. The
death toll across the Caribbean
stood at 38.
At least six people died of ap-
parent carbon monoxide poi-
soning from generators in Flori-
da.
A Tampa man died after the
chain saw he was using to re-
move trees recoiled and cut his
carotid artery.
In Hollywood, after respond-
ing to three early morning calls
Wednesday about patients in
99.
Exactly how the deaths hap-
pened was under investigation,
with Sanchez saying authorities
have not ruled anything out, in-
Patients were treated for de-
hydration, breathing difficulties
Monster truck used for rescues
BRIEFLY
STATE AND THE U.S.
San Antonio
Indicted senator makes
Ponzi scheme claim
Jorge Hernandez, 28; and Jose
Trinidad Medina Tapia aka Alex
Aviles, 31.
The other four defendants
are Marco Antonio Gonzalez, 31;
Ricardo Mendez-Negrete aka
Jose Negrete, 42; Hector Gar-
cia-Gomez, 36; and Ivan Gon-
zalez, 22.
According to the indictment,
in August 2016 through Aug. 31,
2017, the defendants were in-
volved in trafficking thousands
of kilograms (a kilogram is 2.2
pounds) of methamphetamine.
The defendants used multiple
locations in residential neigh-
borhoods to serve as laborato-
ries for the recrystallization of
methamphetamine brought
from Mexico to Texas.
An automotive business also
stored large quantities of narcot-
ics and proceeds of drug sales
were used to purchase vehicles
in an effort to disguise the source
of those funds.
Law enforcement officials ex-
ecuted search warrants on Aug.
31 and seized approximately 750
kilograms of methamphet-
amine in both finished and liq-
uid form, which was valued at
between $5 million and $7 mil-
lion.
By Karen Warren
Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON (AP)
jumped down from the cab of
the monster truck with a pencil
behind his ear, looking a little
like a vintage Nicolas Cage —
thin and lanky.
Chris Ginter, a 34-year-old
commercial real estate develop-
er, became almost mythical in
the days after Hurricane Harvey
dumped heavy rains on the
Houston area, plucking people
from their flooded homes and
streets and zipping them out in
his brother’s giant silver truck
with 55-inch tires.
The Houston Chronicle re-
ports after the storm’s worst, he
continued providing rides for
those in the city’s Memorial area
who seemed to be forgotten —
their homes still flooded, yet
with nary a cloud in the sky.
Ginter is among hundreds of
citizen volunteers who have hit
the flooded streets to try to res-
cue or assist people, often in
boats, canoes and kayaks but
sometimes in modified pickup
trucks like his.
After the storm hit, Ginter
had one mission: to save his best
friend, Robert Maguire, and his
girlfriend, Gina Dyrda. That
mission led to many more water
rescues in West Houston, due to
the release of water from nearby
dams. Homes that had never
flooded were suddenly under-
water, leaving many to feel like
their homes had been sacrificed
for the greater good.
“We tried to get everyone out
of that area that wanted to
leave,” the Houston volunteer
rescuer said. “There were some
two-story townhomes, so not ev-
eryone wanted to leave, of
course. But the next day, more
people wanted to leave, and two
days later, we couldn’t even get
back there and people wanted to
leave.”
*•»>
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A state senator under a fraud
indictment for involvement in a
now-defunct oil field services
company now says the company
“might have been a Ponzi
scheme.”
State Sen. Carlos Uresti has
pleaded not guilty to fraud and
bribery-related charges.
The San Antonio Express-
News reports he testified Tues-
day in a San Antonio bankrupt-
cy court that he and his legal
team investigated Four Winds
Logistics in the wake of his in-
dictment to learn the reason for
his indictment.
He testified that only then
did he learn that “it appears that
it might have been a Ponzi
scheme.”
Such a scheme is an invest-
ment fraud that pays existing in-
vestors from the contributions
of new investors and telling
them they were returns on their
investments.
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Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle/AP
Chris Ginter gets a hug from Nancy Nejad, after Ginter helped her and her husband, Sonny, get
them back to dry land from their home on Saturday in Houston.
— The Associated Press
phase, affected people would pass
around Ginter’s phone number,
leading to a steady stream of ad-
dresses for stranded people who
had thought they would ride out
the storm. They called in hopes
that his amazing rescue truck
could whisk them back to dry
land. In the post-flood days, his
phone number again got passed
around, this time from folks who
wanted to see their homes and get
a handle on the watery nightmare
left behind.
He has remained undeterred
in his mission to help.
On Saturday, as the water
started creeping out of the
Marywood Chase and Memorial
Thicket subdivisions, Ginter
aimed to help people get back
into their homes, which for the
most part remained inaccessible
except by boat or kayak.
use himself as a human measur-
ing stick. The water was midway
up to his chest, but he declared
that he had enough clearance,
trying to stay in the middle of the
street to avoid hitting mailboxes
and fire hydrants.
“I never make a wake, but if
the water gets deep, I have to
part the water a little bit, to get
us back to safety,” he said.
Ginter helped to unload sup-
plies at each of the homes. When
one of the men tried to put mon-
ey in his pocket, he declined.
Just there to help, he said.
Asked about being a volun-
teer, he replied, “My job is easy
compared to that. That’s proba-
bly one of the toughest jobs, be-
ing a volunteer walking through
the water, pulling people in and
out, in a kayak or a boat. Those
are the true heroes.”
Residents wanted to assess
the damage and bring in sup-
plies, such as generators, fans
and garbage bags.
Ginter met up with Gordon
Miller and his family. Using a
stepladder, they loaded clean-
ing supplies onto the bed of the
truck. They were joined by
some neighbors, who hopped
on with waders and a rubber
raft for the return trip. As Gin-
ter inched the truck through
the toxic floodwaters, he on oc-
casion opened the door of his
cab to check to see how high
the water was hitting. If it went
over the running boards, he
would be too deep.
A neighbor in waders
warned him of debris in the
street ahead. A few moments
later, he slid out of the driver’s
seat and into the murky water, to
Dallas
Eight members of Jalisco
drug cartel ndicted
A federal grand jury has in-
dicted eight members or associ-
ates of the Jalisco New Genera-
tion Cartel with felony offenses
stemming from their role in a
large-scale methamphetamine
drug trafficking organization
that operated in North Texas.
Jalisco is a Mexican state on
the Pacific coast, which is a cen-
ter of methamphetamine man-
ufacturing.
Four citizens of Mexico who
were in the United States illegal-
ly are among the defendants.
They are Alma Zoraida Borrayo-
Villasenor, 32; Miguel Carrillo-
Ayala aka Tomas Rodriguez, 38;
Javier Guizar-Hernandez aka
— Staff report
Washington
Dems: Flynn left trip
off security clearance
Former Trump administra-
tion national security adviser
Michael Flynn faced new ques-
tions about a 2015 trip he took to
the Middle East as part of a pri-
vate proposal to build nuclear
power plants across the region.
Two top Democrats said in a
letter released Wednesday that
he appeared to have violated
federal law by failing to report
the trip when he renewed his se-
curity clearance last year.
— The Associated Press
During the initial flooding
Judge revokes Pharma Bro’s bail, sends him to jail
The Clinton offer could be
viewed as “a solicitation of an
assault,” the judge said before
revoking Shkreli’s $5 million
bail.
the court apologizing for his be-
havior, saying, “I am not a vio-
lent person.”
But for the judge, it was too
little, too late.
“He doesn’t have to apologize
to me,” she said. “He should
apologize to the government,
the Secret Service and Hillary
Clinton.”
Shkreli watched in silence as
the hearing unfolded and some-
times put his head down and ap-
peared to scribble notes. After
the judge’s ruling, he remained
expressionless as deputy U.S.
marshals led him out a side door
of the courtroom without hand-
cuffing him.
Defense attorney Ben Braf-
man said outside court he was
disappointed in the judge’s deci-
sion.
‘We believe the court arrived
at the wrong decision, but she’s
the judge and right now we will
have to live with this decision,”
he said.
Shkreli, who is best known
for hiking up the price of a life-
saving drug and for trolling his
critics on social media, was
found guilty last month on
charges, unrelated to the price-
fixing scandal, that he cheated
investors in two failed hedge
funds he ran.
Since his 2015 arrest, Shkre-
li’s attorneys have tried and
failed to get him to tone down
online antics they feared would
taint his jury and, after his con-
viction, hurt his chances for a le-
nient sentence by giving the
court the impression he wasn’t
taking his situation seriously.
By Tom Hays
Associated Press
NEW YORK - A judge
jailed former pharmaceuticals
company CEO Martin Shkreli
on Wednesday after finding that
he violated his bail on a securi-
ties fraud conviction with a so-
cial media post she agreed posed
a threat to Hillary Clinton.
Defense attorneys had ar-
gued at a hearing in federal
court in Brooklyn that the post
by Shkreli, offering a $5,000
bounty to anyone who could
grab him one of Clinton’s hairs
while she’s on a book tour, was
political satire.
But U.S. District Judge Kiyo
Matsumoto didn’t see the hu-
mor, saying the offer could be
taken seriously by fellow Clinton
detractors.
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“This is not protected by the
First Amendment,” the judge
said. “... There’s a risk that some-
body may take him up on it.”
The government had told the
judge that the message had
alarmed the Secret Service de-
tail that protects Clinton, a
Democratic former presidential
candidate and first lady. It also
argued that it fit a pattern of
veiled threats against female
journalists who rebuffed Shkre-
li’s social media advances and of
taunts aimed at prosecutors in
his case.
On Monday, Shkreli, often
called the Pharma Bro, wrote to
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Richard Drew/AP file photo
Former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli speaks Aug. 15
during an interview by Maria Bartiromo during her “Mornings
with Maria Bartiromo” program on the Fox Business Network
in New York.
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 43, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 14, 2017, newspaper, September 14, 2017; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1131870/m1/3/: accessed June 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .