News Roundup: Investigators Charge Man, Identify Second Suspect In Murder Of Jazmine Barnes

Our daily look at Texas headlines

By Becky FogelJanuary 7, 2019 1:13 pm

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

Texas authorities over the weekend charged a man in the fatal shooting of seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes.

Houston Public Media’s Florian Martin reports.

Jazmine was killed a week ago when a shooter opened fire on the car she was riding in with her mother and three sisters.

Now the Harris County Sheriff’s Office has announced the arrest and capital murder charge of Eric Black Jr, a 20-year-old African-American. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says one other suspect is also in custody. The shooter was previously described as a white man in his 40s driving a red pickup truck. That led to allegations of a racially motivated shooting because the victim’s family is black.

 “We believe now that that red truck and the driver is most likely just a witness, either by sight or sound to what actually transpired. We still want that individual to come forward because perhaps they could now shed some light,” Gonzalez says.

The sheriff says the family likely misidentified the shooter because things happened very quickly and it was a traumatic experience for them. He says it seems the suspects were targeting someone else.




U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was sworn in for his second term in the Senate when the 116th Congress got underway last week. Vice President Mike Pence administered the oath of office.

The same day he was sworn in, January 3, Cruz introduced a constitutional amendment that could make his second term his last.

Cruz is pushing for Congressional term limits, with fellow Republican, U.S. Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida. They’re proposing Senators serve no more than two, six-year-terms and for Representatives to be kept to three, two-year terms at the most.

Cruz said in statement that members of Congress have long abused their power and added “Term limits on members of Congress offer a solution to the brokenness we see in Washington, D.C.”

Cruz introduced a similar amendment in 2017. The last time the U.S. Constitution was amended was 1992.




San Antonio native and pioneering comedian Carol Burnett was honored at the 76th Golden Globes Sunday night. During the NBC broadcast received the inaugural award for lifetime achievement in television, and fittingly, it bears her name.

“I’m really gob smacked by this…does this mean I get to accept it every year,” Burnett said.

Burnet became the first woman to host a variety sketch program.

She told the audience that as a kid she dreamed of being a star on the screen who could make people laugh or cry.

“Those childhood dreams came true, sometimes on the big screen, but primarily on television on a comedy variety show that half a century later still connects with people in a way that makes me very proud,” she said.

“The Carol Burnett Show” debuted in 1967 and ran for eleven years. It averaged 30 million viewers a week and won 25 Emmy awards.