Eideard

FedEx could learn today [Friday] what happened to a package containing radioactive materials that went missing a day before.

The company said it is searching in the Tennessee area and that the item is safe as long as nobody tampers with the protective packaging around it.

The item is a cylinder containing rods used for hospital machinery that were being sent to a person in Knoxville, Tennessee, said Sandra Munoz, a company spokeswoman. “The rods are used for quality control calibration,” Munoz said. “We have lots of experience in handling this kind of shipment.”

Munoz said the company may learn more Friday morning when two employees who handled the shipment return to work.

Uh, no one swiped the bar code in transit?

My experience, memory of screw-ups like this – unfortunately – usually ends in tragedy. Often, someone walked off with the radioactive marker source, putting themselves and their families at serious risk.

Phew! They found it. It had been double-boxed and the outer box with shipping info went to the destination. The inner box containing the radioactive rod inside a protective tube – was left aside because of no shipping info – in a FedEx terminal in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Or maybe you can?

More than 1,200 Harris County DWI convictions will be set aside and the cases revisited, prosecutors said after the sentencing of Deetrice Wallace, a Department of Public Safety contractor who faked inspections of alcohol breath testing devices.

About 1,000 defendants convicted of driving while intoxicated can petition for a retrial without evidence submitted by Wallace, the prosecutor said. Some defendants had more than one case affected.

Wallace signed off on about 4,000 test slips. Of those, some did not result in convictions and others were not in Harris County. ADA Terese Buess did not know how other counties would address the problem.

The prosecutor was not optimistic about seeking 1,200 convictions again because the office will not have test results, and other evidence has been destroyed, including videotapes.

Buess prosecuted Wallace for three counts of tampering with a governmental record, a state jail felony. State District Judge Jeannine Barr sentenced her to a year behind bars…

Buess said Wallace manipulated the machines instead of changing the reference sample every month, and pocketed $146,000.

One defendant who will be able to get a new trial, she said, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for a felony DWI.

If you’re employed by law enforcement you must be trustworthy. Right?

Was lack of oversight invented in Texas?