• 49 Posts
  • 45 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 13th, 2023
  • btaf45@kbin.socialOPtoNews@kbin.social•Texas boy, 13, convicted for killing Sonic worker with AR-style rifle
    1·
    9 months ago

    A 13-year-old Texas boy has been found “the equivalent of guilty” in the murder of a Sonic restaurant worker with an AR-style rifle after the child’s uncle got into a fight with the employee, according to authorities.

    The boy was arrested on May 13 after police received calls about a shooting at the Sonic Drive-In in Keene, Tex., about 30 miles southwest of Fort Worth, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office. The boy, who was 12 at the time of the shooting, was found “delinquent,” which is the equivalent to guilty in juvenile court, of a murder charge on Oct. 5. The boy, who is from Fort Worth but hasn’t been publicly identified because of his age, was convicted after nearly seven hours of deliberation, the sheriff’s office announced Sunday.

    The boy is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday, the sheriff’s office said. A juvenile convicted of murder in Texas could face up to 40 years in prison, according to state attorneys.

    Police say the incident unfolded when the boy’s uncle, Angel Gomez, started urinating in the parking lot of the Sonic on the night of May 13. Matthew Davis, a 32-year-old Sonic employee, confronted Gomez, 20, for “being disorderly in the parking lot,” and the argument between them got physical, according to the Keene Police Department.

    Then, Gomez’s nephew, who was sitting in the back seat of the car, retrieved an AR-style .22 rifle and shot Davis at least six times, according to police.

    “A confrontation between two adults became physical at which point the 12-year-old boy got out of the vehicle and fired multiple shots, striking the victim,” the sheriff’s office said on Sunday.

    Davis was airlifted to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

    By the time police arrived at about 9:40 p.m., the boy, Gomez and the boy’s aunt had fled the scene, according to the sheriff’s office. Gomez later returned to the scene of the crime and was arrested, the Keene Police Department said in a news release. Authorities found the boy in Rio Vista, Tex., about 13 miles south of the Sonic in Keene, and took him into custody.

    Gomez is also charged with murder. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney, and court records were not available to determine the status of his case. If he’s convicted, Gomez could face a sentence of five to 99 years in prison.

  • btaf45@kbin.socialOPtoNews@kbin.social•Who profits most from America’s baffling health-care system?
    9·
    9 months ago

    These events are symptoms of the deeper malaise in America’s dysfunctional health-care system. The country spends about $4.3trn a year on keeping citizens in good nick. That is equivalent to 17% of gdp, twice as much as the average in other rich economies. And yet American adults live shorter lives and American infants die more often than in similarly affluent places. Pharmaceutical firms and hospitals attract much of the public ire for the inflated costs. Much less attention is paid to a small number of middlemen who extract far bigger rents from the system’s complexity.

    Over the past decade these firms have quietly increased their presence in America’s vast health-care industry. They do not make drugs and have not, until recently, treated patients. They are the intermediaries—insurers, pharmacies, drug distributors and pharmacy-benefit managers (pbms)—sitting between patients and their treatments. In 2022 the combined revenue of the nine biggest middlemen—call them big health—equated to around 45% of America’s health-care bill, up from 25% in 2013. Big health accounts for eight of the top 25 companies by revenue in the s&p 500 index of America’s leading stocks, compared with four for big tech and none for big pharma.