SUMNER COUNTY – A second earthquake of the weekend shook south-central Kansas Sunday.
The quake just before 3:30p.m. measured a magnitude 2.6 and was centered ten miles northwest of Caldwell, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
On Saturday at 7:13 p.m. the USGS reported a magnitude 3.0 quake was centered approximately five miles southwest of South Hutchinson.
In addition to the Kansas quakes, three small earthquakes have been recorded in northern Oklahoma during the weekend.
The largest was a magnitude 2.6 quake on Saturday near Enid, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) north of Oklahoma City. A magnitude 2.5 temblor was also recorded Saturday near Enid and a 2.2 magnitude quake was recorded Sunday near Woodward, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City.
There were no reports of injuries or damage.
Geologists say quakes of magnitude 2.5 to 3.0 are generally the smallest felt by humans.
Sunday’s quake is the eighth in Kansas this month. The USGS reported 18 Kansas earthquakes in June, 9 in May, a dozen in April, 7 in March and 6 in February.
There are no reports of damage or injury from Sunday’s quake, according to the Sumner County Sheriff’s Department.
Scene of Saturday afternoon crash in Topeka-photo courtesy WIBW-TV
SHAWNEE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect after a Saturday crash and chase.
Just before 4p.m. Saturday police were dispatched to a report of a hit-and-run accident at 29th and SW Fairlawn in Topeka, according to a media release. A silver Mercury Sable fled the scene and eventually became disabled at the intersection of Shunga and Prairie. The occupants of the car fled on foot.
An off-duty Topeka police officer in a nearby park witnessed the driver identified as 24-year-old Candice Richardson leave the car. He held her until on-duty officers arrived. Two occupants of a blue SUV remained on the scene of the accident and reported minor injuries.
A passenger in the Mercury was transported to the hospital for treatment.
The SUV hit a power pole that was suspended over 29th Street with lines down across the road. Police closed the street to traffic in both directions until repairs were completed Saturday evening.
Police did not release details on possible charges against Richardson.
The horses were swept away in last weeks flooding- photo courtesy KCTV
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas City-area woman is hoping to locate two horses she says went missing after last week’s storm-related flooding.
Sherra Schuck tells The Kansas City Star that a chestnut quarterhorse named Agapey and a white Arabian called Lytia were kept in an open barn and pasture on a friend’s property in Overland Park, Kansas.
They disappeared after storms pounded the region Thursday and inundated the barn with water. Shuck surmises one of the horses got spooked, and the other went along.
Schuck says the horses are ages 17 and 31, that she’s had them “since they were babies,” and that she wants them back, “dead or alive.”
Gov. Sam Brownback on Thursday touted his credentials and passion for helping the Trump administration mitigate religious persecution around the globe.
The prospective ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom said he does not know how long it might take for the U.S. Senate to consider his nomination by President Donald Trump, and he hasn’t yet decided when to turn over the reins to his lieutenant governor, Jeff Colyer.
Gov. Sam Brownback discussed his signature tax policy and other key issues during his years as governor during a news conference Thursday at the Statehouse. SUSIE FAGAN / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
In a 35-minute Statehouse news conference, Brownback also reflected on his years at the helm of Kansas. He stood by his signature 2012 tax cuts, which the Legislature scuttled last month.
That the tax cuts didn’t pan out as expected was due to the price of commodities like wheat and oil, he said.
“We were in recession — a commodity-driven recession,” he said, “and you’re seeing multiple states wrestle with that set of issues.”
Brownback said the tax plan had led to the formation of record numbers of small businesses, but he added that it probably should have included a cap on tax exemptions for those companies.
The two-term governor’s chops as a social conservative also were on display. He touted his efforts to restrict abortion in Kansas and reiterated his belief that traditional family structure is declining, which he described as a critical challenge for the state.
On his potential move to the U.S. State Department, where he would head the Office of International Religious Freedom, he said the work is urgent. While in the U.S. Senate, Brownback voted for the 1998 bill, known as the International Religious Freedom Act, that created the office.
“We passed a bill in 1998 and the situation hasn’t improved,” he said. “You could easily argue it’s gotten worse.”
Kansas’ 46th governor, a Catholic, said the role of faith in his own life informs his concern for others around the world. He struggled with his emotions as he described attending church earlier in the day and knowing that people in some parts of the world risk their lives to do so.
“I went and I did something that is simple and done by millions of Americans every day,” he said, “and some have faced death for doing it. I took communion.”
Brownback said persecution affects all faiths.
Asked about accusations that the Trump administration has engaged in religious discrimination with its design of a travel ban targeting several majority Muslim countries, Brownback said the administration has its eye on protecting religious rights for all.
“I know they’re interested in the issues of religious liberty and religious freedom — that’s been clearly communicated,” he said. “And it’s for all faiths. It’s freedom of religion for all faiths.”
Brownback’s potential departure had been the focus of speculation for months, with multiple news outlets reporting on signs of an impending decision by the Trump administration.
Trump revealed Wednesday he would nominate Brownback — who is more than halfway through his second four-year term — for the State Department position, which includes monitoring and responding to attacks on religious freedom around the globe.
Brownback declined to say how long he had been in talks with the Trump administration about the position.
In an interview published earlier Thursday by WORLD Magazine, Brownback said he and Vice President Mike Pence spoke about the post as early as last year, after the presidential election but before Trump and Pence took office.
Brownback’s time as governor became increasingly embattled in recent years. In his first term, conservative allies swept legislative elections, winning enough seats to collaborate with him on overhauling the state’s tax structures in 2012 and 2013.
The massive tax cuts, which included exemptions for owners of more than 330,000 farms and small businesses, were billed as “a shot of adrenaline” for the Kansas economy.
But year after year, state revenues didn’t perform as hoped, leading the governor and Legislature to cut into budgets for state agencies, universities and schools, at times mid-fiscal year.
The instability fed public angst about the quality of education, roads and other government services, and the ensuing political backlash helped Democrats and moderate Republicans wrest legislative seats from conservatives in 2016.
At the end of its 2017 session, the Legislature scuttled Brownback’s signature tax cuts — and then overrode his veto of the effort.
Colyer led the Brownback administration’s effort to privatize Medicaid, creating the system now called KanCare.
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio and KMUW covering health, education and politics. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A man convicted of fatally shooting his boss outside the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, has been ordered to spend life in prison.
The Kansas City Star reports that 48-year-old Willie E. Parker was sentenced Friday in Wyandotte County. That’s where he was convicted in June of first-degree murder in the July 2015 death of Michel Ziade.
Parker worked for 54-year-old Ziade of Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Ziade owned First Class Medical Transportation, which provided non-emergency medical transport.
The shooting occurred in a parking lot near the hospital.
Parker was arrested about a week later in Missouri after a five-hour standoff with police.
RENO COUNTY – A Small earthquake shook south-central Kansas Saturday.
The quake at 7:13 p.m. measured a magnitude 3.0 and was centered approximately five miles southwest of South Hutchinson, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
It is the seventh quake in Kansas this month and the first since a 2.7 magnitude quake south of Coldwater, Kansas Thursday evening.
The USGS reported 18 Kansas earthquakes in June, 9 in May, a dozen in April, 7 in March and 6 in February.
There are no reports of damage or injury from Saturday’s quake, according to the Reno County Sheriff’s Department.
EL DORADO, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on the latest disturbance at a maximum-security Kansas prison (all times local):
A spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections says it has found no evidence of a significant episode of unrest at a state prison reported earlier by a union for state workers.
Department spokesman Todd Fertig said Saturday it investigated whether a group of inmates refused to follow orders Friday evening and did not find that such an incident occurred.
The report that such an incident occurred came from the Kansas Organization of State Employees in a tweet Friday evening. Executive Director Robert Choromanski said the information came from an employee monitoring emergency communications.
Choromanski said Saturday that the incident appeared to be resolved within a half hour.
Fertig did report that there were two separate inmate-on-inmate altercations Friday, each resulting in an inmate injury.
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1:15 p.m.
The warden a maximum-security Kansas prison that’s had four reported disturbances in recent months took a new job within the state Department of Corrections before the latest incident.
Department spokesman Todd Fertig confirmed Saturday that James Heimgartner left his job as warden of the El Dorado prison Thursday. Fertig had no further information about Heimgartner’s new position in the department.
He did not comment on what led to the change.
The new acting warden at El Dorado is Dan Schnurr. He is warden at a maximum-security prison in Hutchinson, about 60 miles to the northwest. Fertig said Schnurr will keep his duties at Hutchinson while the department looks for a permanent warden for El Dorado.
The latest El Dorado incident occurred Friday evening and was reported to have been resolved quickly.
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12:40 p.m.
A union official says the latest disturbance at a maximum-security prison in southern Kansas was controlled quickly.
Robert Choromanski, who heads the Kansas Organization of State Employees, said Saturday that the Friday evening incident at the El Dorado prison appeared to be resolved within a half hour. He says he obtained information from a prison employee who was monitoring emergency communications.
Choromanski says a special security team was called to the prison Friday evening after 30 inmates refused to stand down. No other information was available.
It was the fourth reported disturbance within three months.
Department of Corrections spokesman Todd Fertig declined to comment on the incident.
He says two inmates were wounded at El Dorado earlier Friday in an altercation and one had puncture wounds, but no employees were injured.
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A senior union official says there has been another inmate disturbance at the troubled El Dorado prison in Kansas, the fourth incident in three months.
Robert Choromanski, Kansas Organization of State Employees executive director, says that a Special Security Team was called to the prison on Friday evening after 30 inmates refused to stand down. He says the information came from a prison employee who was monitoring emergency communications. No other information was immediately available.
Todd Fertig, Kansas Department of Corrections spokesman, could not be reached for comment. He told the Kansas City Star that two inmates were wounded at El Dorado earlier Friday, one with “several puncture wounds.” He says no employees were injured. He did not respond to a question from the Star about the reported evening disturbance.
HUTCHINSON — A judge Friday sentenced a Hutchinson college student to five years in prison for starting a fire while conducting chemical experiments in his apartment.
District Judge Trish Rose sentenced 23-year-old Chase Coble, a Hutchinson Community College chemistry student, who was convicted last month of aggravated arson.
Coble contends that he was conducting experiments in his 12th-floor apartment, creating chemical heat to meld metal to plastic. He says there was nothing nefarious about what it. The flash fire set off sprinklers and alarms, which alerted authorities.
Reno County District Attorney Keith Schroeder says Coble had done at least 50 experiments in the apartment, with ingredients including chlorine gas. He says Coble also removed a window and threw items in the alley below in an apparent attempt to hide them. Coble, who is from the Salina area, was attending Hutchinson Community College at the time of the explosion and fire.
GARDEN CITY – A Kansas man accused of forcing himself at gunpoint into a state judge’s home and holding the judge hostage for several hours while making demands of other state officials has been convicted of terrorism, according to Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
A Finney County jury Friday found Jason Linn Nichols, 34, of Garden City, guilty of one count of terrorism, one count of kidnapping, one count of aggravated burglary, two counts of aggravated assault, one count of criminal threat and one count of criminal restraint. The jury also found Nichols not guilty of a second count of terrorism. Senior Judge Jack Burr presided over the trial. Sentencing has been set for September 15 at 1:30 p.m. in Finney County District Court.
Schmidt filed criminal charges in June 2016 in connection with the incident that occurred May 31, 2016, in Garden City. Evidence presented at trial showed that while Nichols held the judge in his Garden City home he demanded a phone call be placed to the Kansas secretary of revenue. During that call, Nichols demanded the Department of Revenue provide to Nichols various types of information related to state taxes.
Kansas law defines terrorism to include the commission of a felony with the intent to influence government policy by intimidation or coercion or with the intent to affect the operation of any unit of government. Under Kansas law, a terrorism conviction carries a possible life prison sentence.
The charges stemmed from an investigation by the Garden City Police Department, Finney County Sheriff’s Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kansas Highway Patrol, Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Dodge City Police Department. Assistant Attorney General Jessica Domme of Schmidt’s office prosecuted the case.
