Thinning the Herd

(1) Police in Houston said the man killed when he drove his 18-wheeler into a freeway pillar on July 6 was part of a two-man scheme to defraud an auto insurance company. Police said it was the other man who was originally scheduled to drive but that, citing the "danger," he (wisely) backed out. (2) Inmate Carlos Medina-Bailon, 30, who was awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso, Texas, escaped in July by hiding in the jail's garbage-collection system. Medina-Bailon's body was found later the same day under mounds of trash in a landfill.