News Roundup: A Crane Collapsed On A Dallas Apartment Building During Weekend Storm

Our daily look at Texas headlines.

By Becky FogelJune 10, 2019 12:58 pm

The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.

One woman died and at least five others were injured in Dallas Sunday afternoon after a storm blew through the city, according to KERA News.

The strong winds caused a construction crane to collapse onto an apartment in East Dallas that also wrecked part of a garage. Authorities identified the woman who died as 29-year-old Kiersten Symone Smith on Monday.

Dallas Fire Rescue’s Jason Evans said Sunday he has dealt with crane accidents before but not like this.

“I don’t recall ever responding to one where it’s actually fallen on an occupied building, much less a five-story occupied high-rise building.”

The storm damaged neighborhoods across North Texas, taking down trees, damaging property and affecting more than 300,000 electricity customers. The power company says it won’t be able to restore power to many of those customers until late Monday night.




Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke says President Trump’s threat of tariffs on Mexican products did more harm than good.

Trump announced over the weekend that tariffs would not take effect today, after saying he struck a deal with Mexico to further stem the flow of migrants coming to the United States.

O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman, appeared on the ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“By and large, the President achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has. There are 6 million jobs in this country that depend on U.S.-Mexico trade,” O’Rourke said.

The New York Times reports the agreement between the two countries consists mostly of things Mexico had already said it would do to reduce the number of migrants headed to the U.S.




Texas joins a growing number of states that have raised the legal age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21 years old. Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 21 into law at the end of last week.

The measure, which will go into effect Sep.1, allows an exception for those in the military.

The governor has until Sunday to sign or veto bills passed during the recent legislative session – a deadline he nodded to on video posted to Twitter.

“All of these bills passed by the legislature – now it’s time for decisions, decisions. We’ll see what I do,” Abbott said.

According to the governor’s office, Abbott has now signed over 560 bills the Texas legislature passed into law.




A Texas man was found late Friday after he went missing for about a week while hiking alone in Arkansas.

Thirty-eight-year-old Joshua McClatchy of Fort Worth texted his mother on June 1 to tell her he had gotten lost, and asked her to send help.

WFAA, the local ABC station in Dallas, captured raw footage of the search and rescue team carrying McClatchy out of the woods.


McClatchy told WFAA his rescue was “not just one miracle; it’s hundreds of miracles.” McClatchy had been hiking in the Caney Creek Wilderness, more than a 100 miles from Little Rock.