honor roll

Fort Worth grabs life by the horns as No. 5 city to live after college

TCU campus, football stadium, Fort Worth skyline

Graduating from TCU? Stick around!

Facebook/TCU

For many college students, it’s tough to imagine life after college when they’re cramming for exams and cranking out research papers. Yet the time does come when they’ll venture into the “real world” with their degrees.

Before graduation rolls around, college students often find themselves wondering where to start their after-school journeys. To help with this homework, real estate website Point2 has developed a list of the best places for life after college, and Fort Worth ropes the No. 5 ranking.

Poor Dallas is way down the list, barely registering at No. 21.

Austin — home of the University of Texas — comes in at No. 1.

The website looked at an array of factors to come up with its ranking, such as population growth, business growth, median age, household income growth, poverty rate, and housing availability and prices.

Point2 considered only the 86 places that host the country’s 100 most successful colleges and universities, as rated by U.S. News & World Report.

Fort Worth — of course, home to prestigious Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan, and Tarrant County College — was noted in Point2's study among America’s top 10 most dynamic college towns in terms of population growth (no secret everyone's moving here!), change in business establishments, and building permits.

Plus, anyone who's tailgated or sat in the stands at a TCU football game knows Fort Worth comes out in droves to cheer for its hometown Horned Frogs.

Other Texas communities on the list are:

No. 17 College Station, home of Texas A&M University.
No. 24 Waco, home of Baylor University.
No. 33 Houston, home of Rice University.

“While education and innovation keep these educational institutions on the map, it’s the economic and social conditions in the city that convince students to pursue a career and build a life in their college town. That’s why household incomes, home prices, the number of businesses and startups, and even the city’s poverty rates weigh heavy,” Point2 says.

university-texas colleges lists rankings

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."