Coronavirus Reporting Backlog Means It Is Hard to Assign Meaning to Numbers. There were four, maybe five, deaths and 399 confirmed new cases in Dallas County yesterday. The 7-day average is up, but the 14-day average is down. Meanwhile, Collin County, believing honesty is the best policy, has attached a disclaimer to its coronavirus dashboard: “Warning: Collin County is providing COVID-19 numbers and data as a convenience to our residents. However, because we have been made aware of inaccuracies in the Department of State Health Services’ reporting, we must advise residents that Collin County has no confidence in the data currently being provided to us.”
A Septuagenarian Is Arrested as Suspected Serial Rapist. David Thomas Hawkins was charged yesterday with a sexual assault that allegedly occurred in 1985. Dallas County investigators collaborated with the FBI to take advantage of an advanced type of forensic genetic genealogy analysis that was used to identify California’s Golden State Killer. DNA from the 1985 case and three former Dallas County cases were retested, and they ended up matching two 1980 cases from Shreveport, Louisiana. Hawkins had been charged with rape in Arkansas in 1973, but he has been living in the Fort Worth area since he was paroled in 1977.
Grand Prairie Fire Expected to Burn for Two More Days. The fire started in the early hours yesterday at Poly-America, a company that produces trash bags and other plastic products, after a power line fell on a plastic sheeting storage facility. No one has been injured, but Bill Murphy, assistant chief of the Grand Prairie Fire Department, says he doesn’t think it is going to be put out anytime soon. “There’s just not enough foam to put on this large of a fire,” he said.
