News of the Ark-La-Tex

An Ore City woman under arrest for DWI has had another charge of assault on a public servant tacked on after she claimed to have COVID-19 and coughed directly into a jailer’s face.

With blessing boxes starting to show up all over the country, the Ark-La-Tex is not one to be left out. While this community service has been going on for years, a Texarkana non-profit is hoping to expand their mission of blessing others. "Hope for Texarkana" is a local non profit organization who has launched the blessing boxes last year in five locations to connect people with pantries in their neighborhood.

A Texarkana woman is dead and three juveniles children are hospitalized with serious injuries after an early-Sunday morning crash in Bowie County.

Texarkana Police are warning local businesses about potential credit card scams after multiple stores in the area were hit last week. According to Public Information Officer Shawn Vaughn, there have been three incidents over the last few days where people used fake credit cards to make some big purchases. They say the scam artists are using blank credit cards to trick cashiers into believing that the transaction is being run as credit even though the back of the card has instructions to run it as cash.

Texarkana police are seeking a man who allegedly rammed his girlfriend’s car Friday afternoon, then shot her passenger in the arm. TTPD officers say around 5 p.m. Friday, Princeton Crawford became upset when he learned his girlfriend was giving rides home to one particular co-worker.

Miller County District Court and sister court at the Bi-State will be running an Amnesty Program through April 30th. Individuals can receive up to $350 off of any active misdemeanor warrants.

47 year old Christopher Jeff Langston has been sentenced by a Bowie County jury to life in prison for sexual assault of a child involving a victim who got pregnant and had his child at 14 years of age. The jury convicted Langston of sexual assault of a child Thursday after also hearing testimony from two other witnesses who allege they were sexually abused by Langston when they were 14.

Hooks High School student James Deanda has won the Texas High School state championship for UIL STUDENT CONGRESS after a grueling couple days of fierce competition in Austin.

The Animal Care and Adoption Center in Texarkana has closed temporarily. The adoption center is located on the 200 block of Harrison Street.

A Bowie County jury began hearing testimony Wednesday in the case of a man accused of fathering a child with a teen girl. 47 year old Christopher Jeff Langston was allegedly 39 when a 14-year-old girl gave birth to his son in August 2014. Langston allegedly began molesting the girl when she was 12. Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards told a jury of seven men and five women that Langston is the “dictionary definition of a pedophile,” in her opening statement Wednesday morning. Richards said paternity testing shows Langston is the father of the child.

CHRISTUS St. Michael is writing another chapter in its more than 105-year history in Texarkana with the construction of the multi- million CHRISTUS St. Michael Hospital – West, set to break ground early this year. Set to open next year, the new, fully-licensed hospital will be conveniently located at Gibson Lane and Arista Blvd. in Texarkana.

With the public appearance of the Omicron variant, many COVID testing sites are being overrun by residents wanting to know whether they are infected or not. This being the case, Arkansas has taken another step to relieve some of the pressure at these sites. Bridging The Gaps of Arkansas in Texarkana has teamed with the Arkansas Department of Health in distributing free COVID-19 testing kits to residents. Johnny Riley, of Bridging The Gaps, said interest in the kits is running high. His organization received nearly 300 kits Tuesday, Jan. 12 and they were out by midmorning the next day.

Schools are closing on the Texas side of Both Texarkana school districts are now closed due to COVID related issues and will remain closed through at least Monday.

Texarkana Fire investigators are figuring out the cause of a blaze that destroyed a former outlet mall in the 2600 block of New Boston Road in Texarkana, Texas, Monday evening.

According to Texarkana Emergency Management Coordinator Eric Schlotter, a surge in positive COVID cases since Christmas is a major cause of Monoclonal antibody treatment centers across the ArkLaTex being affected by a national shortage of treatments such as Regeneron.