Trees Matter

Sign up for this Fort Worth program and learn how to care for urban trees

You can help the trees of Fort Worth.

Memorial Park Conservancy

If you love the great outdoors and are looking for an opportunity to volunteer, Fort Worth has an opportunity for you.

You would be helping to preserve the city's urban forest, and you'd also acquire valuable skills on how to care for trees.

The city has a Citizen Forester program where participants get trained on planting, pruning, and maintaining trees in an urban environment, and is taking applications for its 2020 class.

It's open to anyone, whether you're a budding arborist or simply a tree enthusiast — and really, who is not a tree enthusiast?

Getting approved into the program means you take part in 10 sessions, held on the third Wednesday of each month from March 18 to December 16.

It's a full day: Training begins at 9 am and lasts until 4 pm, with an hour break for lunch. Not so great if you have a full-time 9-to-5 job, but maybe your boss would support your noble endeavor. It could happen.

Training locations vary, split between the Master Gardener's Training Room at 1801 Circle Dr.; the Fort Worth Botanic Garden; and a couple of field excursions to offsite locations to develop some hands-on experience.

Once you go through the training, you get certified, and then put those skills to use helping take care of the trees in public places like parks, along street medians, in school yards, and other places throughout the city.

The Citizen Forester program is sponsored by the Cross Timbers Urban Forestry Council. You can apply here or learn more about the program on their website.

But hurry! Citizen Forester applications are due by February 10.

sustainability

Death Penalty

Tarrant County man gets death for murder of convenience store owner

Tarrant County Sheriff's Office

Christopher Turner

A man received the death penalty for his 2020 cold-blooded execution of a convenience store owner.

According to a release from the office of Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Christopher Karon Turner, 48, to death on November 20 for executing convenience store owner Anwar Ali during a robbery. Tarrant County Assistant District Attorneys Charles Boulware and Allenna Bangs represented the state.

On March 27, 2020, at around 6:15 am, Turner, a convicted felon, wore a surgical mask and a glove and entered the Super Big Country Mart in an unincorporated area of Tarrant County south of Fort Worth. There, he held a gun to the back of Anwar Ali, the 62-year-old store owner, and walked him through the store.

Ali did everything Turner demanded, including opening the cash register to give him money. And yet Turner forced Ali into the bathroom and onto his knees, and shot him in the neck. Ali was discovered, dead in the bathroom, about an hour later.

Turner fled the store in Ali's Toyota minivan with the money from the register and Ali's wallet. In the van, he found more than $50,000 cash in a black bag. Over the next few days, Turner went on a shopping spree, buying cars, jewelry, drugs, clothes, and more. He and others used cash and a credit card that belonged to Ali.

Turner fled to Colorado where U.S. Marshals arrested him. On his body they found a firearm which was determined to be the murder weapon.

"This was a premeditated, cold-blooded murder," Boulware told the jury. "From the moment he was charged with this crime, he has tried to escape responsibility."

Bangs noted that before this trial began, Turner obtained the names of jurors and their telephone numbers, and gave them to an inmate charged with murder. At the trial on November 20, as Bangs addressed the jury, Turner tried to hold up a sign to the jury but was handcuffed by Sheriff's deputies who removed him from the courtroom, while he yelled out "she lied."

Ali came to the United States from Pakistan decades ago to pursue the American dream. Ali's son, Hussein, spoke in the courtroom after the death penalty was announced. "Thank you for giving us justice," Ali said. "I hope there are no more devils like this person."