September 26, 2025

access to health care. He also mentioned his family history in Port Lavaca and surrounding areas of the Crossroads region. In state news, Dallas area advocacy groups held a vigil last night for victims of this week's shooting at an ICE field office. KERA's Dylan Duke reports organizers are calling on ICE to reform how it handles detainees after one was killed and two others injured in the attack. The vigil took place outside Parkland Hospital where organizers believe one of the victims is being treated. Azel Alvarez is a member of the immigrant rights group El Movimento DFW. He said there's a lot of fear in the immigrant community after the shooting. important that we shine a light on what's happening in Dallas and everywhere throughout the U.S. He said I should be more transparent and give information about who the victims are. Federal investigators say the suspected shooter planned the attack for months and was targeting ICE officers. I'm Dylan Duke in Dallas. One man climbed up the cables of the new Harbor Bridge this past Wednesday. Corpus Christi Police confirmed the man was experiencing a mental health crisis as he made his way onto the bridge's cables more than 100 feet above traffic. Law enforcement temporarily shut down traffic while rescue crews worked to bring him down safely. After several hours, first responders were able to do so. He was taken to a hospital for evaluation. Police said no criminal charges will be filed. It's still unclear how he climbed the cable of the bridge. The city of Starbase will work with Cameron County to restore the sand dunes at Boca Beach. City officials announced the city secured the county's permission to move forward with its re-nourishment project. The county's agreement comes with some restrictions. Starbase won't be allowed to seek the same funding for the project. The city also won't be allowed to restrict public access to the beach. KRGV reports the city verbally agreed to the terms during a recent Cameron County Commissioner's Court meeting. Starbase leaders were set to approve the county's terms for the agreement at a meeting yesterday. Earlier this week, Texas A&M Corpus Christi's Autonomous Research Institute held a public demonstration of its autonomous drone program. Spencer Chiokk has your story. The first demonstration of the Autonomy Research Institute's Cirrus took place Wednesday at the Texas State Aquarium and Corpus Christi for a crowd of key stakeholders. Cirrus integrates and combines multiple sensors and airspace tools into a single picture that is used by crews and operations personnel to monitor the national airspace. The demonstration used more than 20 aircraft, some simulated, across the coastal bend. This comes after Texas A&M Corpus Christi was selected by the FAA to lead the integration of unmanned drones into the national airspace system this past spring. Autonomy can be broken down into seeing, sensing, thinking, and then acting.

Now, how you do that, how do you make sure it's all safe? That's kind of the secret sauce that we are looking at. That was ARI Executive Director Michael Bernie Sanders. At the event, two stage scenarios were introduced. The first simulated a stunned sea turtle floating in Corpus Christi Bay, a common occurrence with recent severe cold weather events. So what that really is, is how do I detect the change in a pattern? and that involves a sensor. And so that's really what we were demonstrating was, can the sensor detect the change? We can do it with the human. How do we then replace the human with machine, which is actually more accurate, doesn't get tired, and you can add a degree of certainty to what you're seeing? The drone took off from North Beach and after scanning the area of interest for about four minutes, successfully found the 3D printed turtle. So even if all we do is take 100 miles of seashore that in the past a human had to either look at or ride in a boat and say, don't worry about these 95, here are the five miles where we think most of the turtles are. You can now concentrate your assets, your scarce resources, on five miles instead of a hundred. Four more tests were successfully executed, including a drone scouting of fire. The tests will continue for the ARI as it continues to educate and advance the AI, with the eventual goal of sinking the drones into the NAS. For KEDT News, I'm Spencer Cheahawk. When a loved one dies, it's common to wish for just one more chance to talk with him. The solution may lie in a disconnected rotary phone. They're called wind phones, and they're popping up across the United States, all aiming to give the grieving another opportunity to speak with those they've lost. KERA arts reporter Marquita Fornoff visited a wind phone in Arlington and brings us this report. There's a wooden hutch in Arlington's Bowman Springs Park that looks kind of like a little free library. Inside the box, there's a vintage rotary phone. It's disconnected. but anyone can pick it up and use it to talk to a loved one. It's called a wind phone. You have to make an effort to kind of walk back there and be like, what is this strange box hanging out over here? That's Karen Clemen. It was her idea to put a wind phone here in the park to honor her friends. She was inspired by a man named Uttaro Susaki. He made the first wind phone in Japan in 2010 after his cousin died. He set up an old English phone booth in his garden overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Here's Sasaki, translated by this American life's Mickey Meek.

He's saying, because my thoughts could not be relayed over a regular phone line, I wanted them to be carried on the wind. When a tsunami hit the country a year later, people flocked to the phone. Now there are wind phones all over the world, including the one in Arlington. Kleeman recently dropped by after work. Someone had left a huge abalone shell. Nearby, a note written in a childish scrawl says, I feel sorry for you. I just think that's fabulous. Right? They've come, they've seen our people, and they've talked to their people. So that was the purpose. Two of Clemen's people were family members of her good friend, Julie Compton. The two women have been through a lot together. Compton's family was there for Clemen during her divorce, and Clemen was there when Compton's son Chance died by suicide, and later her husband, David, died of lung disease. Compton hopes that the wind phone can help facilitate conversations about grief and death. As a society, we're kind of weird about death, you know, and really weird about suicide. It's gotten better, but that people don't want to speak of it. Compton is grateful her friend wanted to memorialize her son and husband. Because a lot of people I'm friends with the day don't know Chanson. I'm going to cry. They didn't know David. And so it just really touched me. The idea of talking into a windphone may sound odd, but it makes sense to Amy Dawson. She runs mywindphone.com, which maps out windphone locations around the world. I think it's just such a normal thing we call our person, right? I think it's just a very normal thing we do every day that it feels comfortable and it feels like a way you can connect. Kleeman notices the way she talked to our loved ones has changed with time. It was the first like, what on earth? Why did you do this? And, you know, where have you gone and why aren't you here? Her feelings have evolved. And then it was, here's what happened today. And I so thought of you when I did this or... Something like that. But I'm glad it's there. And I'm glad people are using it. Compton is, too. The phone helps keep her husband and her son's memories alive. You know, the saying that people die twice. They die when they die, and then they die the last time somebody says their night. She hopes others find comfort as the wind carries messages to their loved ones, too. I'm Markita Fornoff in Arlington. This weekend, Rio Fest kicks off two days of music and festivities beginning today at the Heartlandian baseball field. The festival will feature live music by the Randy Rogers Band and Signo, along with tributes to Morgan Wallin, Laney Wilson, and more. Eventgoers can also check out a Mexican artist in market, food trucks, art gallery, 5K run, and a carnival. And in sports tonight, the Corpus Christi Ice Rays are in action on the road as they take on the Danbury Hattricks in Minneapolis. Tomorrow night is college football as Texas A&M Kingsville seeks their first lone star conference win this season. They'll face Solrath State in Alpine. And undefeated UTRGV football kicks off Southland Conference play against southeastern Louisiana.

And that is the latest news and information on South Texas Midday. I'm Rob Bosskamp. Your community arts calendar and more is on the way.