A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Tarrant County and a jail commissary company, ruling there wasn't enough evidence to show they are responsible for the death of a man who overdosed on fentanyl behind bars.

Trelynn Wormley died in 2022, months into his jail stay. An investigation found that a commissary worker, Aaliyah Lyles, smuggled in the drugs that killed him, according to the lawsuit.

Wormley’s mother, Cassandra Johnson, sued Tarrant County and the commissary company, alleging the sheriff’s office allows “deadly drugs to come into and run rampant throughout its correctional facilities.” The lawsuit also accused the jail of disregarding incarcerated people’s medical and mental health issues.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled on July 11 that the lawsuit failed to prove the jail has any de facto policy that lets drugs in.

“While Plaintiffs generally allege that jail officers aided inmates with smuggling drugs into the jail, they provide only three specific instances where jail officers smuggled contraband,” O’Connor wrote. “Plaintiffs also claim that Tarrant County allowed Keefe employees to smuggle drugs, but they provide only one instance of a Keefe employee doing that.”

According to the lawsuit, one jailer failed to search someone’s bag and allowed prohibited items into the jail. Another brought in restricted medication, and another brought “unauthorized cleaning chemicals into the facility” and “gave these chemicals to an inmate.”

These examples — and several other drug-related deaths over an eight-year span — were not numerous enough or similar enough to Wormley’s case to show a pattern of wrongdoing, O'Connor wrote.

O’Connor also released the Keefe commissary company from the lawsuit. They had no way of knowing Lyles would smuggle drugs and were not negligent in hiring her, he decided.

Lyles pleaded guilty to manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance last year and was placed on 10 years of probation, county criminal documents show.

Cassandra Johnson, Wormley’s mother, has become a frequent speaker at Tarrant County Commissioners Court meetings in Fort Worth, as well as at the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in Austin. She has demanded answers for why her son died and why his death never got a proper outside investigation.

More than 20 deaths in Tarrant County Jail custody, including Wormley’s, never got the third-party investigations required by the state. The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office assigned the investigations to the Fort Worth Police Department, which never did any investigating, police confirmed last year. They just reviewed the sheriff’s own internal investigations.

Tarrant County has spent more than $4.3 million in legal payouts since 2022, in cases involving deaths and allegations of abuse and neglect in the jail.

Earlier this month, O’Connor also dismissed a lawsuit against the doctor in charge of jail medical care in 2020. The lawsuit alleged he failed to care for Chasity Congious, a woman who gave birth alone in her cell and lost her baby Zenorah 10 days later.

Congious received a $1.2 million settlement last year in a lawsuit against Tarrant County as a whole. It is the largest settlement in county history.

In December, the county agreed to pay $775,000 to settle a lawsuit from the family of Kelly Masten, a woman with intellectual disabilities and a severe seizure disorder. The lawsuit alleged jailers let Masten injure herself during repeated seizures in an unpadded cell. She survived, but she had to be placed in a medically induced coma once she was released from jail and spent weeks in the hospital, according to the lawsuit.

Another significant jail death lawsuit is still pending. Anthony Johnson Jr.’s family sued last year after the Marine veteran died of asphyxiation in custody. Jailers had pepper sprayed him, and one knelt on his back for more than a minute while Johnson said he couldn’t breathe, video of the incident shows.

O’Connor, who is also presiding over that lawsuit, dismissed claims against Tarrant County in February. Similar to the Wormley lawsuit, he ruled the Johnson family’s lawsuit failed to prove that county policies and procedures led to Johnson’s death.

The Johnson lawsuit continues against individual jailers accused of involvement in Johnson’s death, including two who have been indicted for murder.

Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org.

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Westbound Highway 114 near Davis Boulevard is shut down because of a deadly accident.

Police said a large truck hit a guardrail and flipped onto its side around 4:30 a.m. The driver was killed.

Drivers should expect the roadway to remain closed through the morning commute.

Celebrity psychologist Phil McGraw, best known to audiences as Dr. Phil, is starting a new media network — again.

The announcement comes two weeks after McGraw's Fort Worth-based media network, Merit Street Media, filed for bankruptcy and sued its business partner, Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Merit Street called TBN’s production services “comically dysfunctional” and claimed in court documents the Christian broadcaster “sabotaged” the company’s success.

McGraw’s new venture, Envoy Media Co., will produce original entertainment programming and integrate user-generated content from “citizen journalists.”

The company’s app will, “provide an opportunity for citizen journalists to share news and stories from their communities while seamlessly integrating curated user-generated content on a national scale,” according to a statement first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Merit Street’s presence in Texas was short-lived.

The network made its broadcast debut in April of 2024. By August of 2024 the network laid off 38 employees. The network’s signature program, Dr. Phil Primetime, was put on hiatus in June of 2025 and an additional 40 employees were laid off.

Envoy will operate out of “the Dallas area,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, though it’s not clear whether the company will also be headquartered in Fort Worth.

Game show host Steve Harvey, who was featured on Merit Street, will join McGraw on his new network. Additional talent will be announced in the coming weeks.

Texas lawmakers this year passed a bill to help offset a projected shortage of more than 10-thousand doctors by 2030.

House Bill 2038, also known as the Doctor Act, allows experienced international medical graduates to skip residency programs required in the U.S.

, a BioHealth Innovation Specialist with faculty appointments in The University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation, the College of Business, and the College of Engineering, tells ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș'S Sam Baker why he doesn't think the Doctor Act addresses the real cause of the doctor shortage – a lack of residency positions.

Dr. Gurel: I believe Texas is the last in the nation in the ratio of residency spots to medical school graduates. In other words, there are less residency spots in Texas than medical school grads.

Most doctors practice where they do residency. And so in effect, Texas is exporting its medical students to other states.

So, I think the core bottleneck is the lack of residency positions. And of course, that fits with the Doctor Act because there's a lack of residency positions even for American medical graduates in Texas. Therefore, requiring the foreign medical graduates to take that residency is effectively even making that problem worse. So having them jump over residency is a solution.

Baker: Do you look at this as a sustainable approach to trying to resolve the shortage of physicians?

Dr. Gurel: Increasing the number of residency positions is going to be the sustainable solution. But residency costs a lot of money. It's about a million dollars. And that comes essentially through Medicare and Medicaid.

Texas is aware of its particular shortfall in residency positions. And there are some state initiatives to supplement the financing of residency position. But that hasn't really ramped up. And I would encourage the legislature to really accelerate. Uh, state financing of residency positions.

Baker: How in the world do you make that happen?

Dr. Gurel: Well, like anything, more money. Allocate more funds to residency education, the technical term is graduate medical education, by the state of Texas.

Baker: If we don't address this by the target date for reaching this major shortage, what happens?

Dr. Gurel: So in public health, we have what's called the Iron Triangle. The three pillars that a public health system tries to optimize to ensure the health of the population are quality, cost, and access. So, we want to maximize quality, minimize cost, and maximize access. The most important is access.

Reduced access to healthcare has significant consequences because obviously, people don't get taken care of. And they will die. And ironically, the cost to the system also increased because care that's deferred typically then progresses to more intensive care, and that is gonna be more costly, or primary care that is not seen ends up in the emergency room, which is also more expensive. So, I think that not addressing the issue is going to have pretty significant bad consequences.

But there are other measures we can take. And one of them is increasing medical literacy among the population. Knowing how to talk with the doctor and knowing how diagnosis works and knowing the medical system works, the basic principles of how to get better if you are sick. And I think some degree of medical literacy can increase the efficiency of people's interaction with the healthcare system can help this situation.

It's not going to turn people into doctors. That's not what I'm advocating, of course. But to be a partner with your doctor, to understand how the process works. And I think that can actually ameliorate to some extent the physician burnout because working with patients who really lack that medical literacy can be really exhausting and challenging and frustrating when they don't follow the instructions, and the outcomes are not good, and so forth. So, I think I would add bringing some programs around medical literacy can be quite helpful as well.

RESOURCES:

UNT and Midland College Partner To Recruit And Train Doctors For Rural Areas

Hundreds Of New Residencies Planned Could Ease Doctor Shortage In Texas

Gary Fickes, one of the longest-serving members on the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, has died. He was 75.

as a "true public servant."

"Christen and I were deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our friend and former Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes," . "Gary was a true public servant whose long and respected career left a lasting impact on the people of North Texas. His dedication to community service was unmatched."

Fickes had announced his retirement from commissioners court in April 2023.

“At the end of my term, I will have served 18 years as the Commissioner in Precinct 3. This has been the most incredible and rewarding job of my life,” Fickes said in 2023.

Fickes also served 10 years as mayor of Southlake and chairman of the planning and zoning commission.

Roanoke Mayor Carl "Scooter" Gierisch said in a that Fickes' leadership was matched by his kindness and generosity.

“Whether in the boardroom, at a city event, or among friends, he was known for his warmth, wisdom, and willingness to lend a helping hand.”

Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Rick Barnes said .

“Gary lived a great life as a true Texan, a fixture in local politics, a friend and mentor to many, and just an overall great man,” Barnes said. “Our prayers and blessings are with the entire Fickes family.”

Precinct 4 Tarrant County Commissioner Manny Ramirez praised the work of his former colleague.

“He was not only an incredible Commissioner, but also a wonderful friend, mentor, and family man,” Ramirez said in a . “We are all better for having known Gary. We are praying for comfort for his family and loved ones during this time, and we know that he is now at peace with the Lord.”

County Commissioner Matt Krause, who took over the Precinct 3 seat, said “more than anything, he was a good and trusted friend."

“He was a self-less public servant and a tireless worker for his constituents,” Krause said in a . "I will miss our conversations on the greatness of Tarrant County and how to improve on it.”

Fickes was known for his focus on health issues, transportation and infrastructure. He held an annual prostate cancer screening event and was the host of the annual .

“He led on efforts to bring a regional and holistic approach to infrastructure in Tarrant County and beyond,” Krause said in his post.

Alisa Simmons, Precinct 2 county commissioner, .

"He gave many years to serving Tarrant County, and his impact, especially through projects like the DFW Connector, will be part of his legacy," Simmons said.

Fickes was born in Houston and graduated from Sam Houston State University, located right outside of the city, in 1972. He moved to the Fort Worth area in 1978 and got his start in public service as chairman of the Southlake Planning and Zoning Commission before serving as mayor from 1986 to 1996. Fickes, a Republican, served as Tarrant County commissioner from 2007 to 2024, representing Precinct 3.

During that time he also served as a member of the Regional Transportation Council of the North Central Texas Council of Governments and became chairman from 2018 to 2019, according to a .

Before he retired, Tarrant County renamed its Northeast courthouse to the Gary Fickes Northeast Courthouse. The Leadership in Mobility award given out by the Tarrant Transportation Summit also had its name changed in 2024 to the in his honor.

This story contains information from the ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș archives.

Dylan Duke is ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș's summer 2025 SPJ news intern. Got a tip? Email Dylan Duke at dduke@kera.org.

ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.

Tarrant County’s volunteer historical commission gained five new members in early July, just weeks after County Judge Tim O’Hare attracted scrutiny for derailing a project meant to .

Republican Commissioner Matt Krause appointed four Republicans: Anne Gebhart, Tammy Nakamura, Mona Puente and Thomas Schlueter. Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons appointed one Democrat, Marisela Aramino.

The five-member commissioners court to approve the new members without commenting on the appointments.

Krause told the Fort Worth Report “there was a lot of discussion” regarding the LGBTQ history project and, during the course of that discussion, he reviewed the county historical commission’s makeup and saw there were four at-large seats that needed new appointments. He said each county commissioner gets to appoint three members to the 19-member historical commission, and the remaining four seats are considered at-large.

Krause’s appointments were to fill the vacant at-large seats on the commission. Although recent controversy prompted his review of the commission’s members, Krause said he would have made the same appointments three months ago, had he been aware of vacancies.

“These four people weren’t picked in response to that. These four people weren’t picked because of, necessarily, their stances on that issue,” Krause said. “They were picked because they’re all people that I know, that I’ve worked with for a long time in politics, and each of them I know have a passion for history and want to work hard for Tarrant County.”

The July 1 appointments came after the Fort Worth Report reported June 12 that O’Hare wrote a letter to the Texas Historical Commission chair, John Nau, asking that the commission for a state historical marker to recognize LGBTQ history in Fort Worth. In the May 2025 letter, O’Hare wrote that the application did not follow the county historical commission’s “proper and thorough approval process” — an assertion denied by the county commissioner chair who oversaw the application.

The historical marker would have commemorated Fort Worth’s Jennings Avenue and the surrounding neighborhood in the Near Southside as the center of Fort Worth’s LGBTQ community. It was set to be located at the site of the Rainbow Lounge, an LGBTQ bar raided by members of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and Fort Worth police in 2009 and widely seen since as a local LGBTQ landmark.

Applications for state historical markers, which may commemorate various topics in Texas history, must be reviewed by a county’s historical commission before getting submitted to the Texas Historical Commission for approval. A county’s historical commission acts as a branch of the state commission, rather than of county government.

The LGBTQ historical marker application originated from city of Fort Worth staff and was reviewed by the county commission before getting final approval from the state commission in July 2024, according to documents previously obtained by the Report.

Simmons told the Report her appointment of Aramino to the commission was not in response to the controversy over the historical marker but to fill a seat that had been vacant for several months.

“I had a vacancy on the historical commission, and I filled the vacancy,” Simmons said. “I identified someone who had the time and interest to fulfill the obligations of an appointee to the historical commission. That’s it.”

Aramino is one of the three paid Tarrant County Democratic Party staff members who were as the result of a “strategic decision” to restructure the party. She also serves as a Democratic precinct chair.

Nakamura was a Grapevine-Colleyville ISD board member but narrowly lost her reelection campaign in May, despite garnering endorsements from the Tarrant County Republican Party, local Republican activist groups and prominent Republican PACs. She was one of to lose their election bids for local nonpartisan offices in a campaign season marked by heavy partisanship.

Schlueter is the pastor of KingdomGate, a “strategic house of prayer” in Arlington and serves in leadership roles for prayer networks across the state.

Gebhart and Puente are Republican precinct chairs, volunteers who work on the grassroots level to mobilize voters within their party. Gebhart is also a co-founder and the director of Heart of Texas, a regional homeschooling organization.

As of July 9, the commission’s other members are not publicly listed on the county’s about the commission.

The county commission meets six times per year, on the fourth Wednesday of January, March, May, July, September and November, according to the website. Commission meetings are held at 200 Taylor St.

Krause said he’s hopeful that his commission appointees will look at future projects from “a proper historical framework, from a conservative worldview,” regardless of the nature of each project.

“I would only want to put people on that board who followed along the same kind of ideological lines that I have,” Krause said.

The Fort Worth historical marker would have been the second historical marker in Texas to recognize LGBTQ history, in addition to a marker in Dallas erected in 2018.

Fort Worth City Council member Elizabeth Beck, who represents the Near Southside, and LGBTQ community leaders previously told the Report they for the historical marker.

Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org. 

At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Fort Worth musician Josh Weathers and his band raised more than $337,000 in four hours for families affected by the flooding in Central Texas.

Weathers, who had been scheduled to perform in New Braunfels and Orange Grove over the weekend, hosted a virtual charity concert July 7 after both of his other shows were canceled due to weather.

“Being a musician and being a Texas artist specifically, Hill Country is one of the heartbeats of Texas music,” Weathers said. “We were like, well, we’ve got to do something. We'll just turn it into a fundraiser and encourage people to donate.”

Initially, Weathers thought he might just livestream a solo concert on his phone like he had during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he wanted to get his band involved, and, after making some calls, he had a new venue.

The Heights Church, which Weathers attends, allowed the band to perform in its Cleburne space and take advantage of its livestreaming set up. Friends stepped up to help with organization, graphics and web content.

After posting about the concert, someone reached out to his wife, Kady Weathers, on Facebook and offered to donate baked goods for the cause.

The family wondered if anyone else might have items they’d like to donate.

“My wife put a message out on Facebook and I mean, it went crazy,” he said.

A $12,000 riding lawn mower. A trip to Belize. Hog hunts. Duck hunts. A gumbo and shrimp boil for 100 guests. The number of donations was so large that on top of the bidding that took place during the livestream, the group opened up a .

It all came together so quickly that Weathers said he hasn’t had time to go back and look at how many people joined the streams on YouTube and Instagram. But he did know that the Facebook livestream had more than 100,000 views by the end of the concert.

“We were 10 minutes in and there was $10,000 already on the board,” Weathers said. “I thought, my goodness, that's $1,000 a minute. What's going to happen?”

Every dollar, Weathers said, will go directly to the families who were impacted by the flooding. He and his team are working with local authorities in Kerr County and the surrounding area to connect with families in need.

“Whether your house was destroyed or you lost your car or you lost a loved one and now you've got to take care of some funeral services that you were not expecting 
 We just thought what if we could take the financial stress off of these folks,” Weathers said.

The final fundraising tally won’t be known until after midnight when the silent auction closes.

Members of Pat Green’s family are among those unaccounted for following the floods that ravaged central Texas over the weekend.

The country singer’s younger brother, sister-in-law and two of their children , according to a post from Green’s wife, Kori Green. “We are grieving alongside countless Texans whose lives have been upended by this tragedy,” the post continued.

More than 100 people have died including 27 counselors and campers from Camp Mystic. Unknown numbers are still missing four days into recovery efforts.

Officials said that the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in less than an hour.

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, the singer “due to unforeseen weather and tragedy around the Texas Hill Country.”

Green was nominated for Top New Artist of the Year at the 2004 Academy of Country Music Awards and his songs “Three Days” and “Wave on Waves” each earned Grammy nominations for Best Country song.

Green was born in San Antonio and currently lives in Fort Worth.

Tarrant County Public Health has confirmed its first human case of West Nile Virus this season.

The case involves the non-neuroinvasive form of the disease, the milder form of the virus. Beyond that, health officials haven't released further details to protect the patient's privacy.

Tarrant County Public Health to date has identified 17 mosquito pools positive for West Nile Virus.

The department said mosquito surveillance and testing will continue throughout the season, which runs from April through mid-November.

Tarrant County had 71 human cases of West Nile disease during the 2024 season.

Tarrant County is paying for new software to clean up its voter rolls, which could help elections staff stay ahead of thousands of voter registration challenges, according to the county elections administrator.

In Texas , people can challenge other residents' voter registrations. The Houston-based nonprofit True the Vote has driven mass challenges across the country. The organization created an app called IV3 that makes it easy to compare public records and make thousands of challenges at a time, with the goal of preventing what True the Vote calls

At a meeting Tuesday, Tarrant County commissioners approved $46,000 for a year's access to skip-tracing software, often used by debt collectors.

The software will help identify people who may have died or moved away to keep the local voter rolls current, Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig told ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș Thursday.

"This is kind of a way that we can check the information we have against the most current information available,” Ludwig said.

Skip-tracing gets its name because it helps find people who have skipped town, , a company that offers the service.

The software gives the county a wider range of public records to consult, Ludwig explained. His office already gets a report of everyone who has died in Tarrant County each month, but that doesn’t include Tarrant County voters who died somewhere else, he said. The skip-tracing software does include that information.

A small group of people in Tarrant County sent in more than 15,000 voter registration challenges from January to August last year, according to documents obtained in a public records request. More than half came from one person. One of the challengers told ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș she was concerned about fraudulent voters impersonating dead people on the rolls — an extremely rare crime, .

Officials in , Collin County and other counties have reported similar floods of challenges.

Elections officials say many of the challenges rely on outdated information, and most of the registrations they flag have already been reviewed, ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș reported last year.

Tarrant County’s new software is not necessarily a response to voter registration challenges, Ludwig said, but it will help his office get ahead of them, lessening the load on his staff.

“A byproduct of us being able to be more accurate would reduce those challenges, because now there's less sitting there to challenge," Ludwig said Thursday.

Ludwig emphasized this is not a voter purge. People don’t just get kicked off the voter rolls if someone challenges their registration. The elections office sends them an address confirmation in the mail, and if they don’t respond, they’re placed “on suspense,” Chris McGinn, executive director of the previously told ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș. People on suspense can update their address at the polls.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the software contract was bundled up in a single vote with several other items. Democratic County Commissioner Alisa Simmons was the sole “no” vote.

Right before she voted no, Simmons questioned Ludwig over whether the software was necessary. Ludwig suggested it could save the county money on voter registration checks in the long run, but Simmons pressed for hard numbers.

“How do you know it'll be cost savings? You've not done any analytics,” she said. “This is a feeling.”

"It’s not a feeling, commissioner. I mean, we received over 14,000 challenges from the public last year,” Ludwig said.

There’s been no influx of challenges again this year, Ludwig said Thursday, but he expects them to ramp up again ahead of the midterm elections in 2026.

Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org.

ËÄ»ąÓ°Ôș is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider  today. Thank you.