Saturday night fire -photo courtesy Hutchinson Fire Dept.
RENO COUNTY — Fire investigators are working to determine the cause of fire Saturday in Hutchinson.Just after 11p.m. crews responded to the fire at 1701 E. 3rd Street, according to a media release.
On arrival, crews encountered heavy smoke coming from the eaves of the single-story makeshift duplex. Fire crews located a very hot smoldering fire that did considerable damage to the interior of the structure. No one was home at the time of the fire and the home is deemed uninhabitable.
LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Folks rooting for a snowy winter are going to like the forecast from the Farmers’ Almanac, in the Northeast, at least.
The Maine-based almanac that goes on sale this week is predicting a snowy winter from Maryland to Maine with five coastal storms to bring misery to the region.
The publication, now in its 200th year, predicts cold weather for central regions, wet weather for the southeastern states, and dry weather for the nation’s western third.
The almanac editors aren’t afraid to go out on a limb using a secret formula that dates to 1818.
But that doesn’t mean they’re always right. The publication was off the mark last winter when heavy snow failed to materialize in the Midwest and the Middle Atlantic states were milder than anticipated.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas teenager who won’t even be old enough to vote is running for governor.
Jack Bergerson has officially filed to run as a Democrat for governor of Kansas in the 2018 election. The Wichita teen says he wants to give Kansas voters a chance to try something that’s never been tried before.
The Kansas City Star reports that Bryan Caskey, director of elections for the secretary of state’s office, says Kansas doesn’t set any qualifications to run for governor such as age, residency or experience.
One of Bergerson’s 17-year-old classmates, Alexander Cline, will run to be his lieutenant governor. Cline will be old enough to vote by the election, unlike his running mate.
Bergerson’s announcement Monday brought national attention, including an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Three more defendants have been indicted for their roles in a three-months-long conspiracy that included at least 27 armed robberies, culminating in the armed robbery of a Walgreens in Blue Springs, Mo., in which a suspect was fatally shot by law enforcement officers, according to Tom Larson, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.
Kevin Thompson-Randell, also known as “Kilo Ali,” 22, and Demetrius Nelson, 24, both of Kansas City, Mo., and Frank Garner, Jr., also known as “Fonzi,” 23, of Grandview, Mo., were charged in a 36-count second superseding indictment returned under seal by a federal grand jury in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2017. That indictment was unsealed and made public today; all of the defendants have been arrested.
The second superseding indictment replaces a superseding indictment that was returned on Aug. 10, 2016, and includes additional charges.
The second superseding indictment contains the original charges against Shannon R. Thomas, 27, of Shawnee, Kan., and Deonte J. Collins-Abbott, 22, and Parrise K. Black, also known as “Kilo,” 25, both of Grandview. Thomas, Collins-Abbott and Black have been in federal custody without bond since their arrests.
The federal indictment alleges that all six co-defendants participated in a conspiracy to commit a series of armed robberies between Jan. 2 and March 24, 2016. According to court documents, conspirators participated in at least 27 armed robberies over a period of less than three months; 17 of those robberies are charged in the indictment.
New Charges Added in the Second Superseding Indictment
In addition to three new co-defendants, the second superseding indictment also contains new charges related to six additional armed robberies.
Thompson-Randell and Thomas are charged together in one count of armed robbery of Moonlight Adult Boutique, 8801 E. Truman Rd., Kansas City, Mo., on Feb. 29, 2016. They are also charged together in one count of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.
Nelson and Thomas are charged together in four counts of armed robbery. They allegedly robbed Valero Express, 1331 E. Bannister Rd., Kansas City, Mo., on March 9, 2016; Sonic, 4520 Blue Parkway, Kansas City, Mo., on March 9, 2016; World of Wine and Spirits, 1722 W. 39th St., Kansas City, Mo., on March 10, 2016; and Phillips 66, 1509 W. 12th St., Kansas City, Mo., on March 10, 2016. They are also charged together in four counts of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of those crimes.
Thomas is charged with one count of armed robbery of Conoco, 4656 Prospect Ave., Kansas City, Mo., on March 15, 2016, and one count of brandishing a firearm in relation to that crime of violence. According to court documents, a victim was shot during this robbery.
Garner and Thomas are charged together in one count of armed robbery of a Conoco station, 4516 E. 39th St., Kansas City, Mo., on March 15, 2016. They are also charged together in one count of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. (Thomas was previously charged alone with the Conoco robbery.)
Fatal Shooting During Walgreen’s Robbery
Thomas and Collins-Abbott are charged together with the armed robbery of the Walgreens located at 9th and Duncan in Blue Springs on March 24, 2016. They are also charged together with possessing and brandishing a firearm in relation to that crime. Thomas is also charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Thomas allegedly possessed a Springfield Armory semi-automatic pistol.
According to an affidavit filed in support of the original criminal complaint, law enforcement officers were conducting surveillance that day on Thomas and Collins-Abbott as part of the investigation into a series of armed robberies at area businesses.
On March 24, 2016, according to the affidavit, Thomas, Collins-Abbot and Jermon Seals of Shawnee, Kan., confronted a Walgreens employee outside the business and forced the employee inside at gunpoint. Once inside, the affidavit says, one of the robbers placed a firearm to the back of the employee’s head and took money from the front register. The other two robbers went over the pharmacy counter and took prescription grade cough syrup at gunpoint from the pharmacist. They left the business but were confronted by law enforcement officers as they were walking back to the vehicle. They failed to comply with the officers’ commands, according to the affidavit, and turned towards the officers, pointing a gun in their direction. Officers returned fire and Seals was struck in the exchange. Collins-Abbott and Thomas were apprehended by officers after a short foot pursuit.
Previous Charges Continued in the Second Superseding Indictment
Thomas and Collins-Abbott also are charged together in one count of armed robbery of Phillips 66, 8111 E. 87th St., Raytown, Mo., on March 2, 2016. They are also charged together in one count of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of that crime of violdence.
Thomas and Black are charged together in one count of armed robbery of Shell, 3786 Broadway, Kansas City, Mo., on March 20, 2016, and one count of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of that crime of violence.
Collins-Abbot and Black are charged together in two counts of armed robbery and two counts of brandishing a firearm in relation to those crimes. They allegedly robbed QuikTrip, 16501 E. U.S. 40 Hwy., Independence, Mo., on Feb. 3, 2016; and Pour Boys, 2601 Chouteau, North Kansas City, Mo., on Feb. 3, 2016.
Thomas also is charged with one count of armed robbery of Midwest Title Loan, 330 W. 85th St., Kansas City, Mo., on Jan. 19, 2016, and one count of brandishing a firearm in relation to that crime of violence.
Collins-Abbott also is charged with five counts of armed robbery and five counts of possessing and brandishing a firearm in relation to those crimes. Collins-Abbott allegedly robbed Worlds Liquor and Tobacco, 1901 NE Russell Rd., Kansas City, Mo., on March 7, 2016; Conoco, 4516 E. 39th St., Kansas City, Mo., on March 8, 2016; and Dollar General, 5100 Blue Ridge Cutoff, Kansas City, Mo., on March 21, 2016.
OTTAWA COUNTY– The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) and the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office have requested the public’s assistance locating a vehicle connected to a death investigation which began Saturday night in Ottawa County, Kansas.
At approximately 7:15 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 12, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office responded to 806 KS-18 Hwy., in Tescott, Kansas after a 911 call reporting a deceased individual. When deputies arrived 35-year-old Matthew Schoshke, a resident of the home, was pronounced dead, according to a media release.
The Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office asked the KBI for assistance on Saturday at approximately 7:50 p.m., and agents and a crime scene response team responded.
Authorities are looking for a silver 2006 Ford F-150 extended cab pickup which is connected to the suspcious death of Mr. Schoshke. The pickup has a chrome push guard on the front and a black plastic tool box in the back. It has a Kansas tag 892DZO and also a front tag that reads “EATBEEF.”
Anyone who sees this vehicle is asked to immediately call the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office at (785) 392-2157.
This investigation is ongoing. No further information will be released at this time.
A Leawood, Kansas, couple whose home was raided by a police tactical team in a bungled SWAT-like search for marijuana will get their day in court after all.
A Leawood couple’s home was searched for marijuana in 2012 by the Johnson County Sheriff, despite there being no marijuana in the house. CREDIT PLANTLADY233 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The couple, both retired CIA agents, sued the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, Johnson County Sheriff Frank Denning and seven sheriff’s deputies over the botched 2012 raid, but a federal judge threw out the case in December 2015.
Last month, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed the judge and reinstated the couple’s claims that sheriff’s deputies had violated their Fourth Amendment rights.
Each member of the 10th Circuit’s three-judge panel wrote his or her own separate opinion, amounting to 100 pages in all. In a withering critique of the conduct of the Johnson County deputies, Judge Carlos F. Lucero began his opinion this way:
“Law-abiding tea drinkers and gardeners beware: One visit to a garden store and some loose tea leaves in your trash may subject you to an early-morning, SWAT-style raid, complete with battering ram, bulletproof vests, and assault rifles. Perhaps the officers will intentionally conduct the terrifying raid while your children are home, and keep the entire family under armed guard for two and a half hours while concerned residents of your quiet, family-oriented neighborhood wonder what nefarious crime you have committed. This is neither hyperbole nor metaphor — it is precisely what happened to the Harte family in the case before us on appeal.”
In a statement, the plaintiffs ‘ attorney, Cheryl Pilate,called the decision “a huge and significant” decision for her clients, Robert and Adlynn Harte, and the Fourth Amendment.
“The appeals court obviously carefully scrutinized the large factual record,” Pilate said. “The court’s opinions recount the details leading up to and surrounding the frightening raid on the home of a wholly innocent family that had done nothing more than shop at a garden store and discard loose tea leaves in the trash.
“One of the judges indeed noted that the facts surrounding Operation Constant Gardener and the raid on the Hartes’ home were ‘too rich for fiction.’ The Hartes now look forward to presenting those facts to a jury.”
An attorney for the defendants, Lawrence Ferree III, declined to comment.
The case drew national attention. The raid occurred nearly eight months after Robert Harte and his children visited a hydroponic-gardening store and bought a small bag of supplies as part of a tomato-growing project in their basement. A Missouri State Highway Patrol officer, James Wingo, was parked nearby in an unmarked car, surveilling the store for possible evidence of people purchasing supplies for indoor marijuana grow operations.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, which had earlier conducted a big multi-agency raid on indoor marijuana growers based on tips from Wingo, was eager to conduct another one on April 20, 2012, a day celebrated by marijuana activists. Wingo sent the sheriff’s office a list of names, including those of the Hartes, based on the single instance he observed of Robert Harte and his children patronizing the garden store.
Sheriff’s deputies did three “trash pulls” at the Hartes’ Leawood home, finding wet green vegetation mixed in with the Hartes’ kitchen trash. After deputies determined the vegetation field-tested positive for marijuana, seven officers clad in black SWAT uniforms and brandishing 9 mm Glocks, an AR-15 assault rifle and a battering ram pounded on the Hartes’ door and burst in, guns drawn, at around 7:30 a.m. on April 20, 2012.
Cheryl Pilate, the Hartes’ attorney, called the decision a ‘huge and significant victory’ for the Hartes and the Fourth Amendment. CREDIT COURTESY CHERYL PILATE
Robert Harte was forced to the floor, face-down and shirtless, as officers searched the house for two and a half hours during which all four family members, including the Harte children, were detained in the living room under armed guard. After searching for traces of marijuana and even calling in a drug dog, all that the deputies found was a hydroponic tomato-growing operation. The wet plant material uncovered in the trash pulls turned out to be loose-leaf tea.
Denning, who has since retired, held a preplanned news conference later that day, and subsequent TV news coverage included pre-recorded footage of Denning and marijuana plants that deputies had supposedly confiscated – although none, in fact, had been seized.
In reinstating the Hartes’ Fourth Amendment claims, Lucero found that the Hartes had cast sufficient doubt on the truthfulness of the deputies claims that their field tests of the Hartes’ trash had tested positive for marijuana. That – coupled with evidence that the sheriff’s office had planned its news conference touting its success before probable cause to conduct the raids had even been established – is “sufficient to permit a conclusion that the officers fabricated the ‘positive’ field tests,” Lucero wrote in his opinion.
“There was no probable cause at any step of the investigation. Not at the garden shop, not at the gathering of the tea leaves, and certainly not at the analytical stage when the officers willfully ignored directions to submit any presumed results to a laboratory for analysis. Full stop,” Lucero stated.
Judge Gregory Phillips, while disagreeing that the field tests did not give the deputies probable cause to search the Hartes’ home, found that the deputies ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment by unreasonably continuing their search after they found no evidence of marijuana in the house.
The 10th Circuit’s decision overturns U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum’s dismissal of the case. Lungstrum had ruled that the deputies were protected by qualified immunity and, in any case, could not have known that the field tests they used had produced false positives.
Dan Margolies is KCUR’s health editor. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man has been ordered to spend more than 13 years in prison for raping one woman and trying to sexually attack another after taking them to his apartment.
Forty-two-year-old Jimmie Trosclair pleaded guilty in April to charges of rape, attempted rape and breach of privacy.
Authorities say that on Feb. 18, Trosclair met two women at a tavern and took them to his apartment, where they were intoxicated and fell unconscious. Prosecutors say Trosclair filmed and photographed his sexual attack of one woman and was disrobing the other victim when she regained consciousness, fled and flagged down a motorist for help.
The Sedgwick County judge who sentenced Tosclair ordered him to register as a sex offender after his release from prison.
BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump is blaming “many sides” for the violent clashes between protesters and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Trump also contends that the “hatred and bigotry” broadcast across the country had taken root long before his political ascendancy. Trump’s comments are drawing criticism from Republicans and Democrats who say he should be denouncing hate groups by name.
Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer, a Democrat, says that he blames Trump for inflaming racial prejudices with his campaign last year. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, says that the president “must call evil by its name.”
A neo-Nazi website is praising the president for not condemning white nationalist groups for the demonstration that turned violent. The Daily Stormer says that Trump’s comments are “good” and amount to “no condemnation at all.”
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BEDMINISTER, N.J. (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia (all times local):
President Donald Trump is condemning “in the strongest possible terms” what he’s calling an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” after clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
 A hospital official says one person has died and 19 were injured after a car plowed into a group of protesters in Charlottesville.
University of Virginia Medical Center spokeswoman Angela Taylor confirmed the death to The Associated Press.
The mayor of Charlottesville said via Twitter on Saturday that he is “heartbroken” to announce that a “life has been lost.” He did not provide details.
Witnesses say a car plowed into a crowd of people who were protesting the rally, which was held by white nationalists who oppose the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee by the city of Charlottesville.;
Trump is calling for “a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives.”
The president made his comments at a bill signing ceremony at his golf club in New Jersey where he’s on a working vacation.
Trump says he’s spoken with the governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, and “we agreed that the hate and the division must stop and must stop right now.”
President Donald Trump says there’s “no place” in the United States for the kind of violence that’s broken out at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.
Disturbances began Friday night during a march through the University of Virginia. Saturday’s clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters have grown so violent the governor has declared a state of emergency and police have ordered people to disperse.
Trump has tweeted that “we ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for.” He also says “there is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!”
The White House was silent for hours except for a tweet from first lady Melania Trump — “Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let’s communicate w/o hate in our hearts.”
Fire crews on the scene Saturday morning-photo courtesy WIBW TV
SHAWNEE COUNTY – Officials say an electrical issue is responsible for starting a Saturday morning building fire in Topeka.
Just after 9a.m., the Topeka Fire Department Responded to the fire located at 109 N. Kansas Avenue, according to a media release.
Upon arrival, fire crews found the three-story masonry commercial structure with light smoke showing. Firefighters began an offensive fire attack, keeping it confined to the structure of fire origin. A search of the building revealed no occupants.
Preliminary investigation indicates the fire cause to be accidental, associated with the malfunction of electrical branch circuitry, according to the Topeka Fire Department Investigation’s
Estimated dollar loss – $85,000.00; $75,000.00 structural loss and $10,000.00 contents loss.
A former Geary County Corrections Officer charged with unlawful sexual relations with a female inmate has accepted a plea agreement in Geary County District Court.
Brian Patrick O’Loughlin was arrested on April 20th after an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female inmate.
O’Loughlin appeared in District Court earlier this week where he plead no contest, or guilty, to two counts of misdemeanor battery, one misdemeanor count of possession of marijuana, and one count of interference with judicial process – also a misdemeanor.
The charges of unlawful sexual relations with an inmate – a severity level 5 felony – were dropped.
O’Loughlin was sentenced to 12 months in the Geary County Detention Center – that sentence was suspended and he has been placed on supervised probation for a period of 24 months.
