Archives for June 2012

The hotly contested race to represent Donley County and the rest of District 88 in the State House will go to a runoff after none of the four Republican candidates secured a majority of votes in last Tuesday’s primary.

Incumbent Jim Landtroop was the top vote-getter district-wide with 34.44 percent, but he fell short of the 50 percent plus one needed to avoid a July 31 runoff. Now he will face Canadian school board president Ken King later this summer. King received 30.17 percent of the district vote, followed by Mac Smith with 18.24 percent and former representative Gary Walker with 17.13 percent.

Donley County Republicans saw the race a bit differently. Locally, King led with 189 votes, Smith had 116, Walker was third here with 106, and Landtroop was last with 90 votes.

Walker has since endorsed King, and Smith has not publicly thrown his support behind anyone.

In other contested races of local interest, Donley County Republicans supported Congressman Mac Thornberry over his challenger Pamela Lea Barlow, 424-76, and favored State Sen. Kel Seliger over challenger Randy Rives, 399-90.

The races for US Senator and Railroad Commissioner will both go to the runoff as well, and the local party favored the top two candidates in each race with Warren Chisum leading Christi Craddick, 332-84, for railroad commissioner and David Dewhurst leading Ted Cruz for the US Senate nomination, 293-123.

Local candidates running unopposed received votes as follows: District Judge Stuart Messer 411, District Attorney Luke Inman 396, County Attorney Landon Lambert 382, Sheriff Butch Blackburn 424, Tax Assessor/Collector Linda Crump 443, Pct. 1 Commissioner Mark White 92, Pct. 3 Commissioner Andy Wheatly 106, Pct 3&4 Constable Doug Wright 197, and County Chairman Tom Stauder 405. Joe Hall got one write-in vote for County Chairman.

Texas Republicans chose Mitt Romney as their candidate of choice for president with 68.98 percent with Congressman Ron Paul his closest competitor with 11.94 percent. Donley County Republicans also saw Romney as their top choice with 384 votes, and Paul was their next favorite with 44.

In the Democratic Primary, more than 88 percent of Texas party voters threw their support behind President Barack Obama’s reelection effort. Local Democrats also gave their support to Obama with 33 votes, and 16 votes were divided among other candidates.

Democrats will also return to the polls for a runoff July 31 to decide who will be their party’s nominee for the US Senate. Paul Sadler received 35.11 percent compared to Grady Yarbrough’s 25.83 percent. Local Democrats, however, preferred Yarbrough, giving him 21 votes compared to 11 for Sadler.

Running unopposed for County Chairman, Jean Taylor received 39 votes.

Clarendon is getting ready to roll out the red carpet for visitors to the 135th annual Saints’ Roost Celebration, which will be held July 4, 6, and 7 this year.

Downtown will be the site of the first activities this year with all the happenings on Wednesday, July 4, at the Courthouse Square. The Craft Fair begins at 9 a.m. with the Kids Bicycle Parade starting at 10 a.m. followed by the Shriners’ Barbecue at 11 a.m.

The afternoon of the Fourth will see the Western Parade at 2 p.m. and the Lions Club’s Cow Patty Bingo.

That night the Clarendon Outdoor Entertainment Association will hold its junior ranch rodeo at 7:30 p.m. with a dance to follow on the slap at 9 p.m. with Trevor Leeper providing the music.

The Ranch Rodeo will be held Friday and Saturday, July 6 and 7, with rough stock provided by Bill Hext and Ed Montana announcing. Chris Clerihew & The West Coast Turnarounds will provide music for the dance on Friday and Buster Bledsoe Band will open for Tommy Gallagher & Brimstone on Saturday.

Other celebration favorites, including the Downtown Depression Luncheon and the Henson’s Turtle Race will be held on Friday this year.

Watch future editions of the Enterprise for more information about dates and times. For a booth on the square, contact the County Extension office at 874-2141, and for parade entries, call the Chamber at 874-2421.

The City of Clarendon will sell groundwater to the Greenbelt Water Authority, and the $1.2 million project will be financed with bonds issued in the city’s name but paid for by the water authority.

Clarendon Aldermen in their regular meeting May 29 unanimously approved the contract to sell groundwater to Greenbelt.

The agreement was approved by the Greenbelt board of directors on May 17.

Officials say the contract includes a price of 45 cents per thousand gallons that the authority will pay the city. The price will be renegotiated every three years.

Greenbelt General Manager Bobbie Kidd also presented aldermen with information about the city issuing the bonds to refurbish the city’s old water wells and lay a pipeline to the authority’s filter plant, telling the board it would be the quickest and easiest way to get the project off the ground.

“If we have to go through TCEQ (the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) and the water development board, it will take seven to nine months,” Kidd said. “It will take about two months if the city does it, and Greenbelt can go ahead and use its emergency reserve money to start the project now.”

Kidd and City Administrator Lambert Little said bonding agents and bonding attorneys had come to the same conclusion that this was the quickest and best route to go.

“Greenbelt can issue the bonds, but there are a lot of hurdles and a lot of red tape,” Kidd said. “The city has none of that. The legislature has basically given you the authority to issue bonds whenever you need to.”

Little said the only downside would be that it might impact the city’s ability to issue any other long-term debt, but that in the long run it would strengthen the city’s bond rating. The city would be contractually absolved of any liability to pay the bonds.

Kidd said he is planning on a ten-year payout for the bonds, and that the wholesale cost of water for Greenbelt’s member cities was likely to increase from $1.82 per 1,000 gallons to $2.03. But he also said Clarendon would be benefiting financially from the sale of raw groundwater to Greenbelt.

The board voted unanimously to issue the bonds in the city’s name.

In other city business, the board discussed whether it should meet more frequently than once a month. Alderman Tommy Hill said he felt aldermen would be better informed with one more meeting per month, and he moved to have the board meet twice a month. Aldermen approved the motion but agreed to review the change in the future.

Prosecutors showed photos of a bruised and battered four-year-old Chance Mark Jones at day two of Robert Babcock’s capital murder trial in Memphis Friday, June 1.

The pictures were presented during testimony from Texas Ranger Jamie Downs, who had gone to see the boy in the Northwest Texas Hospital emergency room in Amarillo after he was contacted by Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn that Tuesday morning on January 4, 2011. When he arrived at the hospital, Downs witnessed the condition the boy was in.

“It looked, from my time in the highway patrol, like someone had been in a car wreck,” Downs testified. “His injuries to his head and abdomen looked severe.”

An investigation would reveal that the boy’s injuries had come at the hands of his father, Babcock, who had only had custody of the child for a few weeks after Child Protective Services had removed him from his mother’s care.

Downs said he took 15 pictures in the moments before Jones was taken to surgery, and photos presented to the jury show a nude Jones with bruises to his chin; swollen and bruised eyes; a contusion on the forehead; bruising on the chest, abdomen, and genitals; and a distended abdomen with a partially hexagonal bruise. Jones also took notice of cuts and bruises to the boy’s hands and bruises on his legs.

Later that day, Downs would go to the Babcock residence southeast of Clarendon where he would collect shirts, SpongeBob SquarePants pajama pantss, and bed clothes from Jones’ bedroom all with small blood stains, and he took notice of a circular hole in the laminated drywall near Jones’ closet door – damage that would eventually take center stage during the trial this week.

Jones’ died the next morning, January 5, and Downs, along with fellow Texas Ranger, Jay Foster, interviewed Babcock that afternoon at the Donley County Sheriff’s Office. Babcock told the Rangers that he had seen the boy get some urine on the bathroom carpet while using the toilet the morning before. He said he had become angry about that, confronted the boy, and shoved him, causing the back of his head to strike the wall.

“He didn’t cry; he’s a tough kid,” Babcock said in the interview.

Jones sat on the floor for a bit, Babcock told the Rangers, and then got up and said he wanted to go back to bed. The father pulled a blanket over the boy, and then stepped outside to take a phone call. When he came back into the room 30 minutes later, the child appeared to be dead but was actually breathing a little.

A civil engineering professor from West Texas A&M University, Dr. Kenneth Leitch, conducted an impact analysis on a wall sample from the boy’s room and told jurors Friday that his research showed Jones would have suffered a “moderate but survivable injury” from the force with which his head had hit the wall if that was his only injury.

But that was not Jones’ only injury. Investigators say Babcock began abusing his son on Christmas Eve and continued beating him right up to January 4, when Babcock, after first thinking Chance was dead, called 911.

The only person to see Jones during that abusive time – other than Babcock and his mother, Gayle Edes – was Tammy Overstreet, who babysat the boy on December 29 and 30. Overstreet told jurors that she noticed cuts on Jones’ hands and a knot on his head and bruising under his eyes, but she said Babcock told her the boy had run into a table. When she asked Jones later what had happened, he repeated Babcock’s story. But Overstreet also said Jones complained of his back hurting would sometimes grab his side.

Overstreet testified that Jones was a wonderful, sweet boy and that he played well with her nine-year-old son. She said Jones was playing in the floor with his legs partially under a bed when his grandmother, Edes, came to pick him up.

“He scooted all the way under the bed like he didn’t want to go,” she said, “but he came out when I said it was time for him to go.”

Overstreet said she didn’t report Jones’ injuries because she had not seen any abuse happen and because Jones’ story matched his father’s, but she said she felt angry when she heard Jones had died and called the sheriff’s office.

Jurors spent most of Friday afternoon listening to an audio recording of Babcock being interviewed by Rangers Foster and Downs, during which Foster testified that Babcock seemed to have full answers for all but certain questions, which indicated to Foster that the suspect was being deceitful. And the defendant’s demeanor stood out also.

“He was not very emotional for having just lost a son,” Foster said.

In the interview, Babcock sobs openly after learning about Jones’ death, but then regains his composure. By then end of the more than two-hour interview, Babcock told investigators he was anxious to get out of jail on bond so he could get back to work – if he still had a job, he said – and even joked that he would not be fleeing to Canada because it was too cold there.

Babcock told the Rangers that he had been thrown into being a father and said that he had trouble with his son pointing with his middle finger – which the father told the boy would get him in trouble later in life and for which he would spank the boy’s hand. He said his son would lie to him, claiming to not be hungry when Babcock thought he must be. For that, Babcock said he spanked his son.

But on December 24, Babcock began losing control over these incidents, and he told Texas Rangers that he would slap Jones, lift him by his jaw to put the boy on a counter, and would sometimes punch the boy. Babcock said he kept calling family members and CPS for help with the boy but said no one helped him. When pressed by the Rangers, he admitted that he did not tell his brother or sister-in-law or CPS that he was losing control. He said his mother did take the boy for a day and “got on to me,” but he said she did not mention calling CPS because “her generation didn’t do that.”

Babcock said he did not take the boy for medical care because he was afraid Jones would be taken away from him. Rangers said they could understand Babcock, as a new father in a difficult situation, losing control once, but after that Foster said “human decency” required Babcock to get some help for the child.

During the interview, Babcock said he took full responsibility for Jones’ injuries and knew he should be punished.

“I don’t want to go to prison for the rest of his life but I deserve more than a slap on the wrist,” he said.

If convicted by the Hall County jury, Babcock is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. The trial will resume Tuesday morning in Memphis.

By Roger Estlack, The Clarendon Enterprise, Copyright © 2012.