EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — A man from Juarez will serve time in federal prison both in Texas and New Mexico for murder and illegal re-entry, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.

Luis Antonio Talamantes-Romero, 36, from Ciudad Juarez, was arrested by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who learned he illegally re-entered the U.S. after being deported multiple times, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Talamantes pleaded guilty to the offense in May 2020.

In June 2021, Talamantes was charged with the murder of a 55-year-old woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Talamantes tried to rob the woman and shot her in the head when she honked her car horn at him in November 2019.

Talamantes fled to San Antonio where he was then arrested by ICE.

Talamantes was sentenced to Texas federal prison for 20 years for one count of illegal re-entry. In New Mexico, he will be sentenced to life in prison with an additional 26.5 years to run consecutively.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Talamantes’ Texas sentence will run consecutively to the time he will serve in New Mexico.

LAREDO, Tx. (KGNS) - Authorities need your help identifying a person allegedly connected to a burglary case.

The incident was reported on Mar. 31, 2024, at a snack shop located at the 1000 block of Bristol Road.

The person was caught on surveillance video wearing a hoodie and black pants.

If you have any information regarding the identity or the location of the individual, you are asked to call Laredo Crime Stoppers at 956-727-TIPS.

Police ask that you reference case number 24-0358 when submitting your tips.

LAREDO, Tx. (KGNS) - Authorities need your help identifying a man who is allegedly tied to an auto theft case.

According to Laredo Police, the incident happened on Mar. 30, 2024, at the 2600 block of NE Bob Bullock Loop.

Police say a man who was last seen wearing a blue Texas Rangers cap and a red shirt is believed to be connected to the theft of a white Chevy 1500.

If you have any information on the person’s identity or location, you are asked to call Laredo Police at 956-795-2800 or Crime Stoppers at 956-727-TIPS.

All calls will remain anonymous.

MARBLE FALLS, TX (KXAN) - A serious storm system moved across parts of Texas Tuesday night.

The storm produced large amounts of hail in Marble Falls, Texas near Austin.

Some of the hailstones were the size of softballs and tennis balls.

Damage was reported across the area including smashed car windows, and broken property smashed by the large hail.

The Austin Fire Department also reported that power lines were knocked down in the storm.

RIO BRAVO, Tex. (KGNS) - As spring arrives, residents in Rio Bravo are anticipating an opportunity to clear out clutter and welcome a fresh start with an upcoming cleaning campaign.

Manuela Menchaca, a longtime resident of Rio Bravo, recalls the challenges of disposing of bulky trash in the past. She and her husband even went as far as purchasing a truck to handle the task themselves.

Fortunately, Webb County now offers a free annual cleaning campaign known as “Colonia Clean-Out,” which has made a significant difference in handling unwanted items. County crews have been visiting areas like Rio Bravo for the past eight years to collect items such as old sofas and mattresses for proper disposal.

Cesar Montemayor, a Webb County Road and Bridges Officer, explained the guidelines for the campaign: “We are disposing of a lot of limbs and trees and some tires and other trash. It’s limited, so no paints, batteries, hazardous stuff, those we do not pick up.” Other items not collected include concrete scraps, ashes, sand, dirt, and gravel.

While this service occurs annually, residents like Manuela express hope for more frequent initiatives. County cleanup crews will be in the “La Presa” area on April 16 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., stationed at the Las Presa Community Center located at 1983 Mangana-Hein Road.

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for killing his cousin and her husband nearly two decades ago in an attack that left the couple’s 4-year-old daughter home alone and unharmed.

Brian Dorsey, 52, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after a single-dose injection of the sedative pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Karen Pojmann, communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said in an email. It was the first execution in Missouri this year after four in 2023, and it came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the inmate’s final appeals.

Dorsey took a few deep breaths as the drug was injected, then several shallow, quick breaths. At one point he raised his head from the pillow and blinked hard. After several seconds, all movement stopped. A spiritual adviser seated next to the gurney continued to speak. It was unclear what he was saying — the room is soundproof.

Dorsey, in a final statement, expressed remorse and sorrow for the killings.

“Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame,” Dorsey said in the written statement.

Dorsey, 52, formerly of Jefferson City, was convicted of killing Sarah and Ben Bonnie on Dec. 23, 2006, at their home near New Bloomfield. Prosecutors said that earlier that day, Dorsey had called Sarah Bonnie seeking to borrow money to pay two drug dealers who were at his apartment.

Dorsey went to the Bonnies’ home that night. After they went to bed, Dorsey took a shotgun from the garage and killed both of them before sexually assaulting Sarah Bonnie’s body, prosecutors said. Police said Dorsey stole several items from the home and tried to pay off a drug debt with some of the stolen goods.

A day after the killings, Sarah Bonnie’s parents went to check on the Bonnies after they had failed to show up for a family gathering. They found the couple’s 4-year-old daughter on the couch watching TV. She told her grandparents that her mother “won’t wake up.” Dorsey surrendered to police Dec. 26 of that year.

Dorsey’s execution had raised new concerns about Missouri’s single-drug protocol, which includes no provision for the use of anesthetics. Dorsey’s attorneys described him as obese, diabetic and a former intravenous drug user, all factors that could have made it difficult to obtain a vein to inject the lethal drug. When that happens, a cutdown procedure is sometimes necessary.

A cutdown involves an incision, then the use of forceps to pull tissue away from an interior vein. A federal lawsuit on behalf of Dorsey argued that without a local anesthetic, he would be in so much pain that it would impede his right to religious freedom by preventing him from having meaningful interaction with his spiritual adviser, including the administration of last rites.

A settlement was reached Saturday in which the state took unspecified steps to limit the risk of extreme pain. The settlement didn’t spell out the specific changes agreed to by the state, including whether anesthetics would be available.

Pojmann said no cutdown procedure was necessary for Dorsey.

“It went smoothly,” she said. “No problems.”

About 85 protesters gathered outside the prison in support of Dorsey.

Hours before the execution, the Supreme Court turned aside both of Dorsey’s appeals without comment. His lawyers had urged the high court to step in, saying he had shown good behavior in prison and had been rehabilitated. They also argued a $12,000 flat fee paid to his two public defenders gave them incentive to hurry through the case. On their recommendation, Dorsey pleaded guilty despite having no agreement with prosecutors to spare him from the death penalty.

On Monday, Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied a clemency request that included signatures from 72 current and former state corrections officers who urged the governor to commute Dorsey’s sentence to life in prison without parole. They cited Dorsey’s virtually spotless record of good behavior behind bars. Parson, a Republican, is a former county sheriff. He has never granted clemency since taking office in 2018.

Parson, in a statement, said Dorsey “punished his loving family for helping him in a time of need. His cousins invited him into their home, where he was surrounded by family and friends, then gave him a place to stay. Dorsey repaid them with cruelty, inhumane violence, and murder.”

Missouri has scheduled its next execution June 11 for inmate David Hosier for his conviction in the 2009 killing of a Jefferson City woman. Five people have been executed in five different states this year — Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals court judge Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay his hush money criminal trial, taking just 12 minutes to swat aside an argument that it should be postponed while the former president fights a gag order.

Justice Cynthia Kern’s ruling was the second time in as many days that the state’s mid-level appeals court refused to postpone the trial, set to begin next week, further narrowing any plausible path to the delay that Trump’s legal team has repeatedly sought.

Trump’s lawyers wanted the trial delayed until a full panel of appellate court judges could hear arguments on lifting or modifying a gag order that bans him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the hush-money case.

They argue the gag order is an unconstitutional curb on the presumptive Republican nominee’s free speech rights while he’s campaigning for president and fighting criminal charges.

“The First Amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove said at an emergency hearing Tuesday in the state’s mid-level appeals court.

Bove argued that Trump shouldn’t be muzzled while critics, including his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and porn actor Stormy Daniels, routinely assail him. Both are key prosecution witnesses.

Bove also argued that the order unconstitutionally restricts Trump’s critiques of the case — and, with them, his ability to speak to the voting public and its right to hear from him.

Steven Wu, the appellate chief for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, countered that there is a “public interest in protecting the integrity of the trial.”

“What we are talking about here is the defendant’s uncontested history of making inflammatory, denigrating” comments about people involved in the case, Wu said. “This is not political debate. These are insults.”

Wu said prosecutors already have had trouble getting some witnesses to testify “because they know what their names in the press may lead to.” Wu didn’t identify the witnesses but noted they included people who would testify about record-keeping practices.

The gag order still affords Trump “free rein to talk about a host of issues,” noting that he can comment on Judge Juan M. Merchan and District Attorney Alvin Bragg and “raise political arguments as he sees fit.” Trump has repeatedly lambasted Bragg, a Democrat, and the judge.

Barring further court action, jury selection will begin on April 15.

Merchan issued the gag order last month at prosecutors’ urging, then expanded it last week to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made what the court system said were false claims about her.

Tuesday was the second of back-to-back days for Trump’s lawyers in the appeals court. Associate Justice Lizbeth González on Monday rejected their request to delay the trial while Trump seeks to move his case out of heavily Democratic Manhattan.

Trump’s lawyers framed their gag order appeal as a lawsuit against Merchan. In New York, judges can be sued to challenge some decisions under a state law known as Article 78.

Trump has used the tactic before, including against the judge in his recent New York civil fraud trial in an unsuccessful last-minute bid to delay that case last fall and again when that judge imposed a gag order barring trial participants from commenting publicly on court staffers. That order came after Trump smeared the judge’s principal law clerk in a social media post.

A sole appeals judge lifted the civil trial gag order, but an appellate panel restored it two weeks later.

Trump’s hush-money criminal case involves allegations that he falsified his company’s records to hide the nature of payments to Cohen, who helped him bury negative stories during his 2016 campaign. Cohen’s activities included paying Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

Trump has made numerous attempts to get the trial postponed.

Last week, as Merchan swatted away various requests to delay the trial, Trump renewed his request for the judge to step aside from the case. The judge rejected a similar request last August.

Trump’s lawyers allege the judge is biased against him and has a conflict of interest because of his daughter Loren’s work as president of Authentic Campaigns, a firm with clients that have included President Joe Biden and other Democrats. Trump’s attorneys complained the expanded gag order was shielding the Merchans “from legitimate public criticism.”

Merchan had long resisted imposing a gag order. At Trump’s arraignment in April 2023, he admonished Trump not to make statements that could incite violence or jeopardize safety, but stopped short of muzzling him. At a subsequent hearing, Merchan noted Trump’s “special” status as a former president and current candidate and said he was “bending over backwards” to ensure Trump has every opportunity “to speak in furtherance of his candidacy.”

Merchan became increasingly wary of Trump’s rhetoric disrupting the historic trial as it grew near. In issuing the gag order, he said his obligation to ensuring the integrity of the proceedings outweighed First Amendment concerns.

Trump reacted on social media that the gag order was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional” and said Merchan was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals.

Trump suggested without evidence that Merchan’s decision-making was influenced by his daughter’s professional interests and made a claim, later repudiated by court officials, that Loren Merchan had posted a social media photo showing Trump behind bars.

After the outburst, Merchan expanded the gag order April 1 to prohibit Trump from making statements about the judge’s family or Bragg’s family.

“They can talk about me but I can’t talk about them???” Trump reacted on his Truth Social platform.