Loose tiger is a top story from 2021
In 2021, COVID wars, baseball, winter weather, space, immigration, Astroworld, the Lege and a missing tiger all made big news. Here are some of the stories Houstonians were reading and talking about this year.
Vaccine mandate fights
The COVID vaccine rollout started 2021 out on a high note for those hoping the shots would get the Houston region out of lockdowns and surges. But what followed was a bitter back-and-forth fight over vaccine mandates, including in some of Houston's biggest hospital systems.
Houston Methodist Hospital ultimately fired employees who refused the vaccine, setting the tone for other major hospitals in the region and country. Fired workers sued the system in response but failed after a federal judge tossed the lawsuit in June, calling it “reprehensible” that plaintiffs compared the requirement to those made under Nazi Germany.
Vaccine and mask mandates in hospitals, schools, governments and businesses resulted in protests, lawsuits and bitterness. Those running these institutions struggled to navigate federal rules, Texas prohibitions on mandates and local mandates.
At year's end vaccine mandate drama in hospitals has faded, but disputes over masks and vaccines continue. And the advent of the Omicron variant of COVID has raised the possibility of more lockdowns.
Winter freeze
The deadly February freeze left 20 million Texans in the dark, many without running water or other utilities, for days on end.
“I didn't think it was going to be life-threatening,” Lawrence Ibarra of Aldine said. “We were never under the impression that it would be this catastrophe.”
Millions of Texans who trusted their government and utility companies to keep the power on learned otherwise. A Houston Chronicle analysis showed that nearly 200 Texans died in the freeze, nearly double the official
count. And a Chronicle investigation published in May found state lawmakers brushed aside a decade of warnings about the increasingly vulnerable electric grid before the 2021 freeze.
Acevedo’s fall
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo announced in March that he was leaving the city to take over the Miami Police Department, a move that surprised many Houstonians, whether they admired his charismatic personality or disliked his style.
Acevedo was known for walking and talking with protesters and for his outspokenness, but he also faced criticism over his handling of problems in his department and police-involved shootings.
“This is like getting the Tom Brady or the Michael Jordan of police chiefs,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told the Miami Herald at the time. But after a few months in Florida, Avecedo — a Cuban-American — was fired from his position in October after making a controversial comment about the “Cuban mafia” in Miami. In December he got a job as a commentator at CNN.
Chauvin verdict
George Floyd grew up in Houston, and so the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was especially closely watched here. The moment on April 20 when Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, thirddegree murder and seconddegree manslaughter was a powerful one.
Travis Cains, a friend of Floyd's, spoke in Washington, D.C., Austin and elsewhere after Floyd's death, calling for justice for his friend.
“It's a lot of fighting to get that verdict,”Cains said that day. “It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get that verdict.” A woman ran up to him, tears in her eyes. “FINALLY,” she yelled. “Finally! We don't have to cry no more.”
Floyd's death triggered a new civil rights movement with nationwide protests, as well as conversations around policing reform that have shaken up policy in departments across the country, including in Houston.
Houston’s tiger king
A Bengal tiger named India made national news in May after she escaped an empty rental home in west Houston and ran into some residents while wandering the neighborhood. Lisa Gray reported in the Chronicle:
People at the scene posed three questions that soon, people would wonder not just in Fleetwood, but all around the world.
“Is that your f---- tiger?” Wes Manion, an off-duty Waller County sheriff's deputy who lives in Fleetwood, yelled at Victor Hugo Cuevas.“There's a tiger in the neighborhood?” piped a kid watching from a car. “Why,” asked the young woman at the upstairs window, “is there a tiger?”
After the initial sighting of India, her previous owner, Cuevas, who was out on bond in a 2017 murder case in Fort Bend County, stashed her in the back of a Jeep and drove off, eluding officers. India kept Houston on its toes as the city wondered for days where she was. Eventually, officials connected the tiger to an exotic animal ring in Houston.
The family of Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale helped find India and bring her to her new home, a Humane Society sanctuary in Murchison, Texas.
Space race
“Along the southern beaches and western mountains of Texas, two of the world's richest men are launching rockets,” space reporter Andrea Leinfelder wrote in the Chronicle in July.
“Geography, wealth and an obsession with space have fueled the enterprises of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But other than murals depicting their skyward-gazing faces in Brownsville and Van Horn, respectively, the two have little in common.”
They both made history in commercial space flight in 2021. The Chronicle's reporting showed how the two billionaires with commercial space enterprises in Texas are changing the future of space exploration, and profiled the two Texas towns they made the center of their missions.
Legislative session
Work at the Texas Legislature seemed never ending this year and included a walkout from Democrats and three special sessions that continued well into October, and even after that there were calls for a fourth session. Six hundred sixtysix new laws were approved, many of which went into effect this year, including permitless carry and the abortion ban.
Abortion ban
Texas enacted the nation's strictest anti-abortion law since Roe v. Wade in 2021, leaving millions of women and the people who help them receive an abortion at risk of legal action. The law makes it illegal for women to receive an abortion after six weeks, which is often before women know they are pregnant.
The ban has led to a convoluted, ever-changing fight in the Texas court system, with the most recent decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, allowing the ban to stay in place. Since it was enacted, thousands of women have had to travel to abortion clinics in other states, while more vulnerable women who cannot afford to travel or take off of work are left without any options.
Afghans arrive
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan at the end of the summer resulted in hundreds of thousands of people scrambling to evacuate the war-torn country. The crisis hit home for Houstonians with family there, with many working to bring them to safety despite visa and logistical challenges.
The Chronicle spoke with one family after they arrived in September with their newborn, Ajwa, who was born in a local hospital while the family was being processed in Fort Bliss.
“I'm pretty happy that she is OK, everything is OK with her and she's healthy,” said the girl's father, Atiqullah, who worked with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. “I'm really excited that my daughter she (wasn't) born on the plane.”
Many newly arrived Afghans got their first job in the U.S. at Afghan Village restaurant — just one example of the tight-knit Afghan community in Houston that helped evacuees looking to start over.
Haitian migrant crisis
Thousands of Haitian migrants in September arrived and created a makeshift refugee camp under the Del Rio International Bridge after experiencing a series of devastating crises that has many fleeing for their lives. The Chronicle traveled to the border to cover the sprawling camp and hear their stories.
One migrant there, Exode, said he went to Chile from Haiti for work and safety. But his plan to build a life in Chile went bust after his visa applications had been denied, despite his attempts to go through formal immigration channels. “I couldn't build a life for myself like I wanted to because I didn't have papers,” Exode said. Going back home to Haiti wasn't an option either. “The politics in my country are in a serious crisis,” Exode said.
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his private residence in the capital, Port-au-Prince, on July 7. The camp was cleared out in a matter of weeks, but the forces pushing Haitians to travel across continents continue.
Abandoned kids case
The case of three abandoned children who were found Oct. 24 with the skeletal remains of their 9-yearold sibling in a west Harris County apartment that had no power shocked Houstonians.
As the days went on, more gruesome details emerged in the case, including that the children witnessed their brother's death and watched his body decompose for nearly a year; that they suffered abuse at the hands of their mother's boyfriend; and that the neighbors who helped keep them fed seemed oblivious to their plight.
The children — ages 7, 10 and 15 — were living in a barren apartment with no furniture. They slept on the floor of the living room. Someone put up fly traps to abate the bug infestation. After dark, neighbors said they could see the teen's silhouette through the blinds of his bedroom window. He paced around and stared out the window.
Both the mother, Gloria Williams, and the boyfriend, Brian Coulter, were charged, and the children were placed in CPS custody. The children fell through every crack caused by the pandemic; school officials lost touch with the children, like thousands of others across the region during the pandemic, and Child Protective Services never intervened despite previous history with the family.
World Series run
The Astros almost silenced the naysayers this year with their stellar performance in the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox that got them through to the World Series, their third run in five seasons.
The city's beloved “Rally Nuns” kept fans hopeful through the bitter end, when the Astros lost Game 6 of the series to the Atlanta Braves.
“This turned into the nightmare after Halloween,” said John Carrolton, 54, during the middle of the sixth that night. “I'm getting a beer,” his friend Don Roberts, 40, said. “Our bats, they were just ice cold tonight,” said Steve Cordell, 39, of Houston.
Astroworld Festival
Houston was forever changed on Nov. 5, when rapper Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival ended in tragedy after a dangerous crowd surge during his performance led to the deaths of 10 young people.
A Houston Chronicle investigation found the tragedy was a catastrophe weeks in the making caused by critical failures by multiple authorities tasked with ensuring the safety of attendees that day, including inadequate and poorly trained security, deficient coordination between city officials and festival management, and a nearly hourlong delay in halting the show after the danger became apparent.
Juan Garcia, a young man at the concert, recalled being trapped before he was able to get free: “On his back, he found himself pinned under a woman and man, his arms the only part of his body he could move. Juan threw off his glasses, foggy under the heat. The people on top of him constricted his chest and stomach, limiting his oxygen. He saw feet moving around him. For two songs, Juan tried to keep calm to avoid hyperventilating. But with no one making efforts to rescue him, he screamed for help. ‘I was like, f---, I can't die here,'” he said.
‘Unfair Burden’
Throughout the course of 2021, the Houston Chronicle's investigative team published a series of stories and interactive projects looking into injustices allowed under Texas' tax law called “Unfair Burden.” These findings include million-dollar tax breaks for the well-connected and big corporations that everyday Texans pay for; millions in online sales taxes that are being quietly funneled to a handful of Texas towns under obscure tax laws; and tax-exempt clergy residences all over Texas that, again, everyday Texans are subsidizing.