HOUSTON — The police chief in Houston says evidence shows that a 4-year-old girl who has been missing since earlier this month was killed and he’s asking for the public’s help in finding her body.

Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference Thursday that finding the body of Maleah Davis will allow her family to have a proper burial for her. He says he believes Derion Vence, the former fiance of the girl’s mother, knows where the child is but has not told police.

Vence reported the girl missing in early May, saying she’d been abducted after he pulled over on a Houston highway. Police later said the story didn’t add up.

Vence is being held on a charge of tampering with evidence, specifically a human corpse.

 

Officials warn of measles
exposure at airport

DALLAS — Health officials in Texas say a person who passed through Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport has tested positive for measles and are warning other travelers to make sure they’re immunized.

Tarrant County health officials said in a statement Thursday that the person was at the airport May 15 and used the Skylink tram later in the day while traveling from terminals D to A.

Measles is highly contagious and is transmitted to others by airborne droplets when an infected person exhales or coughs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that the number of U.S. measles cases through the first three months of this year has surpassed the count for all of 2018.

This year’s numbers have been driven by outbreaks in several states, including Texas.

 

Police officer back to work
after shooting woman

BAYTOWN — A Houston-area police officer who fatally shot a woman with mental illness is back on the job but not the streets.

Baytown police Officer Juan Delacruz returned to work Monday, according to a department spokesman. He’ll be on administrative duty during the investigation into his shooting of 44-year-old Pamela Turner.

Delacruz’s return to duty was announced Thursday as community leaders, elected officials and Turner’s family gathered at a Houston church to memorialize her and call for justice.

“I want Baytown, Texas, to know this is not something you’re going to brush under the rug and send the policeman back to work,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, a prominent civil rights activist, said during a eulogy. “If he’s going back to work, we’re going back to work too to get justice for Pamela Turner.”

Turner is the latest in a line of black people whose deaths in police shootings were captured on video and drew national attention.

 

2 plead guilty in
sex-trafficking case

FORT WORTH — Two men have pleaded guilty in Texas for using the now-defunct Backpage.com sex-trafficking site to advertise victims for sale.

Federal prosecutors in Fort Worth say Joshua Glaze pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking through force fraud or coercion. Faizal Sabar pleaded guilty to the same count May 13. Both await sentencing and face up to life in prison.

Investigators say Sabar in 2017 traveled with a victim from Pennsylvania to Texas. Authorities say Glaze helped Sabar create online ads and rent hotel rooms. They say the two men kept the proceeds.

Glaze and Sabar are the latest to plead guilty related to Backpage.com, which was based in Dallas and shut down by law officers in 2018.

 

See also: TEXAS ROUNDUP — Man who fled after drug plea gets 18 years