Gay dads face false child abuse reports in a small Texas town, but then help uncover major embezzlement scheme

This sounds like a movie but it really happened in a small Texas town.

• Two gay dads, Gary Garcia and Chad Pritchett, faced hate and discrimination in a small Texas town of Aurora, where they opened an outdoor restaurant called Atomic Taco.
• The town administrator, Toni Lynn Wheeler, who was also their landlord, tried to drive them out of town by various means, such as filing false child abuse reports, sending a health inspector to find faults, and creating a fake buyer for the property.
• Wheeler also embezzled more than $767,000 from the town’s accounts and burned down the City Hall twice to destroy evidence.
• The dads fought back by pushing local, county and state officials to investigate Wheeler and her cronies.
• Wheeler was eventually charged with multiple crimes and became homeless.
• The dads proved that bigotry does not pay and that justice may prevail in the end.

Two gay dads, Gary Garcia and Chad Pritchett, faced hate and discrimination in a small Texas town of Aurora, where they opened an outdoor restaurant called Atomic Taco.

The town administrator, Toni Lynn Wheeler, who was also their landlord, tried to drive them out of town by various means, such as filing false child abuse reports, sending a health inspector to find faults, and creating a fake buyer for the property. Wheeler also embezzled more than $767,000 from the town’s accounts and burned down the City Hall twice to destroy evidence. The dads fought back by pushing local, county and state officials to investigate Wheeler and her cronies. Wheeler was eventually charged with multiple crimes and became homeless. The dads proved that bigotry does not pay and that justice prevails in the end.

Update to the story from one of the gay Dads:

We hope justice will be served. The District Attorney has not done anything on the cases. These people all know each other. 

We have a been waiting for the criminal cases to have a trial and the District Attorney has been delaying it for months, with no reason. 

The fire has not been indicted. There is a cemetery association that she was on that is also missing monies. The Texas Ranger stated the cases are closed, so not sure why nothing is being done. 

-Gary Garcia

Check out the full story on the Dallas News here.