news10A OctOber 8, 2020The Monahans news

Vol. 89, No. 1 Monahans, Texas 79756 Thursday, October 8, 2020 $1.00 USPS 781-520 Published Thursday

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ObituariesGabriel Zubia acOsta

Gabriel Zubia Acosta, 68, of Monahans, passed away on Octo-ber 3, 2020 in Monahans, sur-rounded by family.

He was born in Ojinaga, Chi-huahua, Mexico to Praxedis and Maria Trinidad Acosta on Decem-ber 23, 1951.

He completed his teaching degree in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1973 and that same year, he and wife Celia Acosta Brito were also married. They moved to Mona-hans, where Gabriel began his oilfield career with Gulf Oil and later retired from Chevron U.S.A. Inc. in 2017.

He loved family, friends and music and was often strumming his guitar. Gabriel was a devout member of St. John’s Catholic Church and active with the Monahans Masonic Lodge.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Praxedis and Maria Trinidad Acosta and older brother, Armando Acosta.

Gabriel is survived by his wife of 47 years, Celia Acosta Brito; his three children, Wendolyne Acosta Utterback (Marty Utterback), Gabriel B. Acosta (Nicole Acosta), Aaron Alonso Acosta (Sarah Acosta); his siblings, Manuela Sanchez, Juan Daniel Acosta, Maria del Socorro Duran, Oscar Acosta, Maria Magdalena Ingram and Marta Wright. He was a wonderful grandfather to Garon, Evan and Lauren Utterback; Ema, Gabriel Aron, Izak and Kaleb Acosta; and Quinn and Samuel Acosta.

Pallbearers will be Gabriel B. Acosta, Aaron Acosta, Marty Utter-back, Garon Utterback, Evan Utterback and Gabriel Aron Acosta.

Visitation was held at Harkey Funeral Home on Tuesday, October 6 from 9 a.m.– 3p.m.

The rosary followed at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Catholic Church. Funeral Mass was held on Wednesday, October 7 at 2 p.m. also

at St. John’s Catholic Church with Father Allan Alaka officiating. Burial followed at Monahans Memorial Cemetery.

l.K. WhitmanJune 21, 1949 - October 4, 2020

L.K. Whitman 71, of Dallas, passed away October 4, 2020. He was born July 21, 1949 in Henderson to M.K. Whitman & Margaret English Whitman.

There were two things L.K. especially enjoyed; watching the Chicago Bears play football and scrapbooking.

He will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him.

He was preceded in death by his parents and his sister; Willie Fay Whitman of Monahans.

He is survived by three sisters; Lovelle Weston of Dallas, Ona Lewis of Denver, Colorado, Doris Whitman, two brothers; Kenneth Whitman of and Larry Whitman, an aunt; June Kay Cartwright, and two uncles; Robert Weston and Kerry Weston all of Dallas.

Visitation will be held Monday, October 12, 2020 at 7 p.m. at Shiloh Baptist Church in Monahans.

A funeral service will be held Tuesday October 13, 2020 at 1 p.m. at Shiloh Baptist Church in Monahans. Interment will follow at Monahans Memorial Cemetery.

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“An arrest warrant for Sul-livan was issued on September 30 and he was subsequently arrested and charged him with Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child,” he said.

Valle added, “There are two elements that make a sexual assault case ‘aggravated’ — the victim being under the age of 14 and the use of threats, force,

weapons or drugs.” The offense can be punishable

by imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for any term of five to 99 years or life and/or a fine not to exceed $10,000.

Bond was set at $50,000 and Sullivan remains in custody at the Ward County Jail in lieu of posting the bond.

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VOtinG From Page 1aered to the County Clerk’s office on the dates and hours noted above.

A valid ID is required in order to vote. Acceptable forms of identification are Texas Driver License; Texas Personal ID Card, Texas Handgun License; U.S. Military ID Card with Photo; U.S. Passport, Texas Election ID Certificate and U.S. Citizenship Certificate with Photo.

With the ongoing renovation to the Ward County Library, there are important changes to polling places for the November 3 Election Day. Hours will be from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Polling places for the Novem-ber 3 election are as follows:

Precincts 1E, 2, 3N, and 4E: Ward County Event Center, 1525 Monahans Parkway.

Precinct 1W: Barstow Com-munity Center, 100 East Concho Street, Barstow.

Precinct 3S: Grandfalls Com-munity Center, 711 North Ave A, Grandfalls.

Precinct 4M: Wickett Com-munity Center, 501 N. O’Brien St., Wickett.

Precinct 4W: Pyote Communi-ty Center, 1108 N. Ward, Pyote.

Sample ballots can be found on page 12B of today’s edition of The Monahans News. The sample ballot shown is for Precinct 3N and 3S. All bal-lots are identical for national, state, district, and county-wide offices. There are differences in precinct specific ballots for local offices, although none are contested.

The difference are:Ballots for Precinct 1E and 1W: County Commissioner Pre-

cinct 1: Jubentino “Tino” San-chez;

Constable, Precinct No. 1 and 4: Write in vote

Ballot for Precinct 2:Constable, Precinct No. 2 and

3: James P “Jimmy” HammondBallot for Precinct 3N and 3S:County Commissioner, Pre-

cinct No. 3: Dexter Nichols IIIConstable, Precinct No. 2 and

3: James P “Jimmy” HammondBallot for Precinct 4E, 4M

and 4W:Constable, Precinct 1 and 4:

Write in vote.

could be towed off of the tracks, the oncoming Union Pacific train collided with the truck a short time later. The locomo-tive sustained damage to the front of the engine but could be moved and was routed to a

side track and the train then continued on its route.

The truck was unoccupied at the time of the incident.

The incident is being inves-tigated by DPS Trooper Kody Gayle.

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Jenkins was also arrested on a charge of unauthorized use of a vehicle, a state jail felony. Further investigation revealed Jenkins had two outstanding arrest warrants out of Midland County for unauthorized use of a vehicle and evading arrest or detention with a vehicle, both felonies.

No further details were available.

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County Senior Citizens Center will remain be open. The Monahans Post Office will also close to observe Columbus

Day, while most retailers and private businesses will be open.

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An ‘Honor Walk’ will be held honoring cancer survivors prior to the game. All participants are asked to please arrive by 4:30 p.m.

“We would like for all cancer survivors and cancer fighters to join us and be recognized,” Head Coach Candace Barnett said.

Pink “In Memory” paper vol-leyballs will be available for pur-chase. A raffle will also be held.

Freshman will play at 3 p.m. and Junior Varsity is slated to follow at 4 p.m. both in the Jerry Larned Sports Complex.

“We hope everyone in the community will come out on Saturday for a day of action on the court and to support cancer awareness, they all matter,” she added.

All proceeds will benefit a local Monahans resident cur-rently fighting cancer.

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Texas arm of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter to MWP-ISD, as well over 400 other school districts across the state, asking them to revise dress code policies that it says are “unconstitutional and discriminatory.”

The ACLU also said that, in August, the Texas Association of School Boards updated its guidance to encourage schools not to enforce gender-specific grooming codes.

Kines orginally only asked the district about the process of get-ting on the school board agenda to address the policy but was told — a day after ACLU’s letter were mailed out — she must go through a “grievance process.”

Smith has allowed Kines’ child to remain in school while going through this process.

Kines began the grievance process with MWP-ISD and had her Level One meeting with Tatom Elementary principal Jill Steen on September 21, includ-ing in her complaint recent court rulings stating dress codes that are gender specific are a viola-tion of an individuals’ civil liber-ties, and the decision to suspend her son unless he cuts his hair violates his civil rights and is dis-criminatory toward his gender.

Kines received a written re-sponse from Steen on Septem-ber 30.

The response letter from Steen concluded with, “As admistra-tors of MWP-ISD, we must adhere to and comply with adopting School Board Dress Code Policy, regarding males’ hair length, and therefore, at this Level One hearing, the remedy being sought by Mrs. Kines can-not be met.”

“The response was pretty much as I suspected. Mrs. Steen cannot do anything about the policy and there was nothing that came of the meeting other than wasting her time and mine. I do not understand why it took 15 days from the day I re-quested the meeting to get this response,” Kines said.

Kines said, she requeted, and was denied an opportunty to begin the grievience process at Level Two, since accoring to FNG Local, page 4, paragraph 3, Section 2, Under Level One policy, “if the only admistrator who has authortiy to remedy the alleged problem is the su-pertindent or designee, the

complaint may begin at Level Two following the procedures, including deadines, for filing the complaint from at Level One.”

“To me, this means Mrs. Steen cannot make this decision, and Mr. Smith had previously told the newspaper he cannot make the decision either, so at a mini-mum I should have been able to skip Level 1 and save everyone some time,” she added.

When The News asked Smith why Kines was not able to skip Level One, Smith said he was “not going to discuss that with us because he did not feel like that is something that belonged in the newspaper and he believed we were misunderstanding the policy.”

Smith went on to say, the first meeting he had with Kines was not a part of the grievience pro-cess and she was still reguired to follow the grievience process since she was not satisfied with the decision at Level One.

Kines was required to file an appeal at Level Two — which is a conference with the Superin-tendent.

The appeal has to be filed in writing, within ten days of the date of the written Level One response.

Kines filed the response on October 6, which gives Smith until October 20 to set a meet-ing.

In her appeal Kines explained she disagreed with the outcome of the Level One grievinece be-cause, “the admistrator at Level One does not posses the ability to rectify the discriminitory pol-icy, therefore the meeting was a waste of our time, and Level One should have been skipped per district policy.”

She went on to reference the FNG Local policy on page 4, paragraph 3, Section 2, Under Level One in her appeal.

“I feel like the district will stand by the policy because they do not want to admit they are wrong, but that’s ok. We will continue to go through the process little by little until we get there, but I will not cut my son’s hair,” she added.

A petition, started on Face-book, calling for the district to make changes to the hair and dress codes has received 833 signatures since its conception.

The News will follow this story and present new updates as they come available.

three and one, respectively. Ector County has had no activity since mid-May.

According to oilprice.com, West Texas Intermediate Crude continues to be in the $40 per barrel range with $40.73 on Tuesday morning. Since mid-June, prices have ranged from $36.76 to $43.39.

But oil prices are expected to drop, according to David Messler, an analyst with oilprice.com. Oil markets are bracing for a tough year end. The recent increase in Corona virus cases is having a ripple effect, which will drive prices down. Recent reports that the much touted corona vaccine may have uncomfort-able side effects which is causing people to shy away from taking it, Messler said.

Those factors are keeping people from flying by the droves causing oil demand to drop. Ad-

ditionally, airlines are expected to layoff thousands of people caus-ing an even greater drop in de-mand as car travel will decrease as unemployment increase.

Prices for unleaded gasoline has trended mostly downward over the past month in most parts of the country, according to AAA. National average on Tuesday was $2.182 per gallon, down by 3.6 cents. The average price in Texas has dropped from $1.893 to $1.851. Pecos County is down by 6.4 cents to $2.08 and Reeves County has dropped from $2.216 to $2.124. Winkler County has the lowest price in the area with $1.997, down by 4.2 cents per gallon. Ector County and Crane County both increased over the past month. Ector County was at $2.076 compared to $2.048 a month ago while Crane County increased to $2.014 to $2.011.

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GeOrGe ViasanaGeorge Louis Viasana, 63, of Carlsbad, New Mexico passed away

Monday, September 14, 2020 in Carlsbad, New Mexico. George was born November 17, 1956 to Regino Jose Viasana and Isabel Romero in Clayton, New Mexico.

George lived in Monahans, Texas for many years before moving to Carlsbad, New Mexico. He has numerous friends in both Carlsbad, as well as Monahans. George is loved by many and will be greatly missed by all.

He is proceeded in death by his daughter Kimberly Viasana.George is survived by his brothers; Vicente Viasana of Monahans,

and Joe Viasana of Carthage, sisters; Manuela Ramos of San Anto-nio, Esmeralda Viasana of Dallas, Guadalupe Armendariz of Cedar Creek, Marilyn Chavez of Monahans, Susie Gonzalez of Carthage, and Anna Pescatore of Lubbock.