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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 1980)
ctkvt Old man wants to die in jail United Press International Jji GALVESTON — Santos Casarez |tios, 74, walked into a bank, laid his jane threateningly on a counter and [ordered a teller to fill his brown aper sack with money. But police id Tuesday his aim was not easy iches. After the teller handed him more than $10,000, Rios told a bank offi- S cial he wanted to be arrested and fewalked over to sit beside a security Hguard until police came for him. “He flat made a statement that m old, Tm sick, I’m going blind, I took the money, I want to go back to e penitentiary and die,”’ United States National Bank Vice President Gilbert M. Bray said. “He said... he was all alone.” “Just looking at his record, he robably spent a good portion of his lymts; ife there prison,” prosecutor let j(i George Cooley said. “I’m just as- uming he can’t make it out in the leal world. ” Police said Rios walked into the reatto tank unarmed Monday and handed seleo eller Teresa Kalsnes a note that ead, “This is a robbery. Fill this if.If yflag.” She gave him $10,643. Even though Rios looked old, jtood 5'-6", weighed 135 pounds, yore thick glasses and walked with a jane, Kalsnes said she was con- jilort ’inced “he was serious” and was _ 0( i Tightened. She felt differently juesday. “He’s an old man,” she said. T feel sorry for him because he wants jo go back to prison. Why die in prison?” Rios was jailed in lieu of $20,000 ond pending arraignment. Prosecutors said they planned a sychiatric evaluation and then pro- ecution as usual, if warranted. “Our concern is right now we ant to see if he’s mentally compe- :ent,” Cooley said. "It’s kind of a strange situation, but if this man Wants to go to the pen and we turn him loose now he might go out and shoot somebody to make sure he goes.” Cooley said reports from the Na tional Crime Information Center in dicated Rios had “25 or 30 aliases.” Of his 50 arrests, two dozen were for immigration violations, others for burglary, theft and robbery, with 19 convictions. I “He’s been out a little more than a year from the federal peniten tiary,” Cooley said. “I talked to him , down at the police station. I said, |L ‘What penitentiary you want to go back to?’ He said Any of them.’ said, ‘Well how about Hunts- ille?’ (the Texas Department of brrections, which inmates consid er inferior to federal prison.) He said ‘Oh no. Not Huntsville. ” Put The Bite on Expensive Xerox Copying lf' THE : I mediately, the impossible ■takes a LITTLE LONGER" AGENT AERO AIR FREIGHT 1 SERVICES I WE DO MORE THAN i DELIVER I YOUR PACKAGE OVERNIGHT ( WE GUARANTEE IT! 150 CITIES . $22.11 UP TO 2 LBS. [the freight problem solvers I PH: 713-779-FAST . P.O. BOX 3862 \ BRYAN, TX. 77801 THE BATTALION Page 3 WFDNFSDAY. AUGUST 6. 1980 — wr-i immUMT HUUUai D. lytJI GTE $31 million rate hike okayed; cooled by $4 million poor service fine United Press International AUSTIN — The Public Utility Commission Tuesday granted Gen eral Telephone Co. a $31 million-a- year rate increase but slapped the company with a $4 million penalty for poor service, ordered the new rates delayed until Oct. 1 and threatened to revoke the operating license of the state’s second largest phone company if service is not improved. The rate increases will raise minimum monthly service charges for residential customers — cur rently ranging from $4.75 to $16.20 — to $7.75 in small exchange areas up to $12.25 in cities where custom ers place the largest number of local calls. Company officials complained the delay in raising rates of its 1.2 million customers would cost the firm $2.5 million. "We had not expected anything like that,” said F. E. Hightower of San Angelo, vice president of Gen eral Telephone Co. of the South west. Hightower also expressed sur prise at the PUC move to initiate an investigation beginning next Feb. 1 to determine if the company is meeting quality of service stan dards. The PUC may then begin pro ceedings to revoke the firm’s opera ting certificate and allow other firms to provide service to areas now handled by GT. “General Telephone doesn’t in tend to relinquish its properties without making every effort to re tain them,” Hightower said. The $4 million penalty — deduct ed from the sum the PUC would otherwise have allowed in rate in creases — and the delay in im plementation of the $31 million in crease granted marks the first time the state agency has financially penalized a company for poor service. “This commission is not going to continue to permit a company to provide the kind of service that General Telephone has in this state,” said George Cowden PUC chairman. “I don’t think we have a company of any size in this state that has as poor a record of service as General Telephone.” Cowden said he would favor de laying the rate hike for as much as six months but H. M,- Rollins, the newest member of the commission, suggested Oct. 1 as the deadline. Rollins noted unsatisfactory service was a major issue in the administrative hearings over GT’s first rate increase request since the PUC was created in 1975. “If there was ever a case to penalize a company, this is it,” argued Don Butler, attorney for the Texas Municipal League and cities opposing the rate increase. The company’s attorney, W. W. Wueste of San Angelo, said efforts to improve service were hampered by ice storms in the north and west and tropical storm Claudette along the Gulf Coast in 1979. Wueste said no other company has been penalized for service prob lems and urged the PUC to allow time for the company to improve. Allen King, a PUC attorney, said complaints about service come from every area served by GT and are not limited to times of adverse weather. “Never in my three years with the commission have I been sub jected to such a barrage of com plaints as we have received from customers of General Telephone,” King said. “Consumers do not ob ject to paying a fair rate for tele phone service but they can neither understand nor tolerate the poor quality of service by this company. ” General Telephone — which serves more than 260 communities and cities in Texas, ranging from San Angelo to Texarkna, Baytown to Sherman, and Del Rio to Bryan — had requested a $58 million rate increase. Local celebrity Tamara Follett, one of the students from Texas A&M who appears in Playboy magazine’s September feature, “Girls of the Southwest Conference,” autographs a copy of magazine at a local bookstore Monday. 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