Amarillo News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Amarillo News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST Three people indicted on felony murder charges in Amarillo. Jontrell Graves, eighteen; Jaylyn Johnson, eighteen; and Meghan Kern, forty-three. A Randall County Grand Jury brought the charges after Jeremy Ray, forty-five, was shot in the thirty-nine-hundred block of South Tyler Street on May twenty-fifth. Ray died four days later. All three are in the Randall County Detention Center now.

KELI The simple read is three arrests, case closed. Structural reality underneath: felony murder means they didn't have to pull the trigger. Texas law says if you're present during a felony that results in a death, you're culpable whether you fired the shot or not. That's a higher bar than murder, and it's what the Grand Jury chose to charge. Watch for discovery motions in the next few weeks—those will show what the state's case actually rests on, who was where, and what the defense contests. If one of the three flips, the other two face harder decisions fast.

HAST Amarillo College is moving toward a property tax rate hike. The board will take a public hearing on August twenty-fifth for a rate of twenty-four cents and sixty-seven mills per hundred dollars of assessed value. That's a four-cent increase—thirteen-point-five-nine percent over this year. The total property value in the district went up fifty million, but exemptions for homeowners over sixty-five or with disabilities ate into that. The district's net taxable value actually dropped a hundred forty-nine million. So they're raising the rate to keep revenue steady.

KELI Different front. Pampa police are still working a shooting that happened Tuesday morning at Recreation Park. One man is dead. Suspect is in custody. Pampa Police Department had more detail on their incident log, but specifics on the victim and the charge are still being processed.

HAST Region 16 named Dumas ISD's Board of Trustees the Outstanding School Board of the Year for 2026. Recognition for governance in a Panhandle district.

KELI On this day in nineteen thirteen, Harry Brearley produced the first stainless steel in the United Kingdom.

HAST That's the Amarillo News Drop. Full script and sources at inkwell.wiki/news/amarillo.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. A principle from Gil's Intelligent Version worth borrowing: where a source genuinely leaves a question open, an honest translation preserves the ambiguity instead of quietly deciding for you.

HAST They call it The Refused Verdict. At inkwell dot wiki, slash giv.