Shot while walking

A man walking through his westside apartment complex Sunday night was shot to death, Houston police said.

The victim, whose identity has not been released, was walking to a convenience store about 9:30 p.m. when he was shot in the head by someone who then fled on foot, police say.

Anyone with information on this case is urged to contact the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.

---

Follow Hair Balls News on Facebook and on Twitter @HairBallsNews.

Photos by HPD

Jamie Reyes: Slammed into car with no lights

A four-year-old boy was killed when his father was driving a malfunctioning vehicle without lights slowly on the South Loop Sunday night and was rammed by another driver.

Both drivers were drunk, police say.

The boy, whose name has not been released, was with his father Jamal Green, 38, on the South Loop just west of I-45 Sunday at 10 p.m.

Police say the Nissan Sentra Green was driving "was either stalled out or moving very slowly in the northbound lanes of the South Loop East without its lights on."

Jaime Rodriguez Reyes, 42, plowed his Chevrolet Lumina into the Sentra.

More >>

Photo by HPD

Erick Erminger: Considered suicide after murder, HPD says.

A woman who did a favor for her boyfriend ended up dead, Houston police say.

Jennifer Lynette McKinley, 28, had been called Friday night by her boyfriend, who asked her to give him a ride home from a bar because he was too drunk to drive, HPD said.

She took Erick Charles Erminger, 44, back to her Kingwood home. The couple began arguing and he killed her at 9:45 a.m. Saturday, police say, while McKinley's eight-year-old son slept in a nearby bedroom.

"The following morning, Erminger called his mother, saying he had killed McKinley and was going to commit suicide," police said. "Erminger's mother called 911 and went to her son's apartment, where responding HPD patrol officers arrested Erminger."

The child was taken to his biological father. Erminger has been charged with murder.

---

Follow Hair Balls News on Facebook and on Twitter @HairBallsNews.

Because I used to love him, but it's all over now.

In entertainment, everything has a logical arc. Whether we're talking about a television series, a radio show or a particular personality, they all have a shelf life as to how long they can remain compelling, a shelf life with a beginning, a middle and an end.

The end is rarely pretty, and perhaps the most difficult aspect of the arc is knowing when to eject, identifying the point at which you leave the audience wanting more forever. From a creative standpoint, that's really the trick.

Along those lines, this past Friday afternoon, the shelf life of Jim Rome's Smack-Off, the annual contest which Rome uses to name his then current "best caller" and "King of Smack," finally expired.

More >>

We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them.

So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even.

This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involving wit, clarity and whatever else we feel like at the moment.

We wrote about a Panhandle high school getting sued by a student who claims injuries from a traditional "Nazi role-play" day where he portrayed a Jew.

One reader noted the bizarre "Red Ribbon Day" tradition couldn't even get the facts right.

More >>

The Heimlich maneuver: controversial for drowning victims.

We've written before about the Heimlich maneuver being pushed as an aid to drowning victims, and the problems a lot of people have with that.

It makes things worse rather than better, critics argue.

Leading the charge is Peter Heimlich, son of Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, who the maneuver is named for.

Now, he reports, the Heimlich Institute "has finally quit circulating my father's dangerous, thoroughly discredited medical claims."

The institute's Web site has, he says, "deleted its main pages recommending the Heimlich maneuver as an effective treatment for drowning rescue, to stop asthma attacks and to treat cystic fibrosis."

"I'm relieved," he tells Hair Balls.

More >>

The blushing bride hates publicity.

DID YOU HEAR?!?!?!?

KPRC anchorwoman Dominique Sachse got married!!!!!! OMG!!!!!

In case you missed the Channel 2 ads, Sachse was one of -- if not the -- hardest-working single moms out there. That's a remark which, if we were churlish, we would find incredibly insulting to all the single moms in Houston who don't have access to River Oaks-level nanny care.

But we're not churlish.

Sachse, 44, married businessman Nick Florescu in what the station dubbed "an intimate ceremony" officiated by Joel Osteen, who's all about keeping things on the down-low.

More >>

One suspended umpire's a good start, but there's so much more still to do.

I have a good friend who was a minor league umpire, so I tend to have a bit more of a sympathetic eye toward their foibles than do others. I see them as human, and I think they're doing the best job they can, most of the time. I don't think the umpires favor teams over other teams, and I think they want to get the call right.

Umpires aren't perfect. And they do make mistakes. Often. Not just the variations that each umpire has with the strike zone (seemingly no umpire calls the same strike zone even though the strike zone is explicitly laid out in the rule book). The inability to correctly call obvious balks is puzzling, as is the inconsistent calling of the in-the-neighborhood call at second base on the double play (it's simple, if the guy's not actually standing on the base with the ball before making the throw to first, it can't be an out).

MLB has partly entered the modern age and has attempted to ease the jobs of the umpire through the use of replay, but they haven't gone on full-on replay use, which means that numerous really easy calls have been missed this season because the umpires are out of position. And umpires missing really easy calls lead to argument after argument between the umps and players, arguments which wouldn't be necessary if replay were used.

More >>

Ioffer.com

Weird tips from a simpler time.

With school winding down, you might be wondering how you are going to amuse your idle whippersnappers all summer long.

While it is no easy feat, you, the parents of 2012, should count yourselves lucky. Your own parents were in even more of a bind back in those pre-Internet, pre-water park, pre-video game, pre-Chuck E. Cheese and Children's Museum days of 1972, and so what constituted fun time for the kiddies was, shall we say, somewhat broader than today.

Here are five selections from Houston Tours for Children and Other People, published by Ebenezer Press in the Heights the year Tricky Dick unleashed the burglars on poor old George McGovern. (To be fair, the booklet does include stuff like Astroworld, NASA and the Battleship Texas/San Jacinto, too, not to mention some more obscure things that seemed pretty amazing, but we've selected only the weirdest ones here.)

5. Take 'em to a tortilla factory, or even two! At Tony's Tortilla Factory (913 McKee), your kids will thrill at the workings of this "small family owned business of a type rapidly disappearing in an age of complex industrial plants." They will marvel as several people make tortillas and taco shells out of fresh corn and water with no preservatives added! Plus, at the end of the tour, there will be "plenty of hot, buttered tortillas for everyone to taste."

More >>

Robinson PD

Joshua Pierce: Almost a quarter-ton of BS.

Though his actions were sleazy in the extreme and hurt a lot of people, including some he was ostensibly close to, you've just got to hand it to Joshua Matthew Pierce.

In a Waco federal court yesterday, Pierce, of Houston, pleaded guilty to defrauding a Waco bank, his own son-in-law and another man, two jet-leasing companies and a Waco lawyer.

According to KXXV, it all started last October, when Pierce opened a checking account at the Extraco bank in Waco. After telling them he would be wiring in $10,000 at a later date, he was able to withdraw $550 with a debit card. Pierce never made the promised wire transfer.

A month after that, Pierce took a meeting with two men, including his son-in-law Ken Lewis. (Records state that Pierce is only 30, so we're not sure how that worked unless there's a step- involved, or Pierce had a daughter at 15 who then got married herself at the same age, but anyway...)

More >>