High school student gets 20 years in jail for trying to have girl killed

By Calvin Palmer

It does not cost much to have someone killed in Texas, $150 and $15 worth of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax should do it.

But Thomas Moses Ramirez, 17, made the offer for the killing of a girl he believed was preventing him getting back with a former girlfriend to an undercover police officer and was arrested in Pasadena’s Strawberry Park last June.

Today, District Judge Ruben Guerro sentenced the Sam Rayburn High School student to 20 years in prison.

Ramirez pleaded guilty to solicitation of capital murder and asked for probation.

Harris County Assistant District Attorney Stephen St Martin told the court that the girl Ramirez tried to have killed still fears for her life.

Defense attorney Greg Glass argued Ramirez had not been in trouble with the law before and that prison would only teach him to become a criminal.

“He knows he messed up, but he’s matured and learned from his mistake,” Glass told the judge.

The plea fell on deaf ears.  If Glass is correct, Ramirez is destined to graduate as a criminal, albeit a 37-year-old one.

[Based on a report by the Houston Chronicle.]

Chimpanzee’s owner denies she gave the animal Xanax

By Calvin Palmer

The owner of Travis, the 200-pound chimpanzee that mauled a Connecticut woman, disputes police reports that she gave the animal a drug to calm him down.

Sandra Herold said today the she “never, ever” gave the drug Xanax to her 14-year-old pet chimpanzee.

Travis, a former star of TV ads for Old Navy and Coca-Cola, attacked Herold’s friend, 55-year-old Charla Nash, when she came to visit on Monday.

The chimp badly mauled Nash and left her severely injured.

Stamford Police said Herold told them that earlier on Monday she gave Travis Xanax  in some tea to calm him down because he seemed agitated.

Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center says the anti-anxiety drug can lead to aggression in people who are unstable to begin with.

“Xanax could have made him worse,” if human studies are any indication, Coccaro said.

[Based on a report by the Associated Press.]