HARVEY COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities are investigating a woman on various charges after a chase and crash just after 8p.m. Tuesday in Harvey County.
Several citizens reported a reckless driver nearly running other vehicles off the road, according to North Newton Police Chief Randy Jordan.
At the time, a North Newton K-9 officer and KHP Trooper were working another call. The K-9 officer located and attempted a traffic stop on the 2008 Chrysler 300 driven by Jodi Lynn Kennedy, 44, Udall.
The driver stopped two or three times, according to Jordan when the chase started and continued on an all dirt portion of Spencer Road four miles southeast of Newton.
Approximately a mile after the KHP Trooper deployed spike strips, the vehicle left the roadway, struck an embankment, reentered the road northbound again, left the roadway a second time, stuck another embankment and rolled.
Kennedy was transported to the hospital in Wichita.
The Harvey County Attorney is considering possible charges including Aggravated Assault of a Law Enforcement Officer, Flee and Elude and DUI.
TOPEKA- A federal grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday charging a former Kansas Highway Patrol trooper with violating an individual’s civil rights by using excessive force. according to Tom Beall, U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas and Darrin E. Jones, Special Agent in Charge of the Kansas City Field Office of the FBI.
The indictment alleges that James Carson, 43, Independence, Kan., while acting under color of law as a trooper with the Kansas Highway Patrol, used excessive force amounting to punishment against a victim identified in court records as R.T.
The indictment further alleges that Carson’s use of excessive force resulted in bodily injury to R.T. The crime is alleged to have occurred June 25, 2013, in Labette County, Kan.
If convicted on the civil rights charge, Carson faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The case is being investigated by the FBI and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Maag and Trial Attorney Rose Gibson of the Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section are prosecuting.
RICHMOND, Ind. (AP) — A coroner says a 23-year-old Kansas man died after he fell while working on a roof at an eastern Indiana animal feed plant.
Wayne County Coroner Ron Stevens says Jacob Bugg of Hutchinson, Kansas, was working with a roofing crew about 1 p.m. Tuesday when he fell about 40 feet at Richmond’s Purina Mills plant.
Stevens tells the (Richmond) Palladium-Item it’s not clear what caused the fall because no one witnessed it. He says Bugg was working on a lower section of the roof than the rest of his crew.
Stevens says Bugg sustained blunt force trauma. An autopsy was scheduled for Wednesday.
Mike Oxford, director of the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center, speaks to disability advocates in Topeka after returning from Washington, D.C., where he was arrested during a protest of the new Senate health bill. JIM MCLEAN / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
Disability rights advocates are among the strongest opponents of the Obamacare replacement legislation that Republicans are attempting to push through Congress.
If anything resembling the bill that the U.S. House approved in May or the one the Senate is considering passes, they say it will roll back decades of progress.
Both bills propose Medicaid cuts approaching $1 trillion over 10 years. Cuts of that magnitude, they say, would force reductions in services that Americans with physical and intellectual disabilities need to help them live independently in their communities.
“I’m very afraid that people would have to go to nursing homes,” said Kim Dietrich, a 46-year-old woman with cerebral palsy who works for the nonprofit Topeka Independent Living Resource Center.
Mike Oxford, the center’s director and a national disability rights organizer, has more dire fears.
“People will die,” he said.
Oxford said he knows people who would rather die than live in an institution.
“People would sit at home and not get any help and end up not getting medication and die,” he said.
Oxford was one of more than 40 disability rights advocates arrested last week for blocking the entrance to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office in Washington, D.C., while protesting. They entered McConnell’s office and those who could clambered out of their wheelchairs onto the floor.
“We set it up to be dramatic and make a point, and also to make sure we couldn’t just be carted out of there and be out of sight and out of mind in five minutes,” Oxford said.
Such deep cuts would make it difficult for the state to maintain services to the approximately 15,000 Kansans with disabilities now receiving services and slow efforts to extend them to the nearly 5,000 people still on waiting lists, Oxford said.
Senate GOP leaders announced Tuesday afternoon that a vote on the bill had been delayed until after the July Fourth recess, in part because support among Republican senators was uncertain.
All 46 Democrats in the U.S. Senate and both of the independents who caucus with them are on record opposing the bill.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, of Kansas, issued a statement soon after the vote delay was announced that he opposed the current version of the health bill.
“The Senate health care bill missed the mark for Kansans and therefore did not have my support,” Moran said.
The vote delay followed the release Monday of an analysis of the bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That analysis estimated that 22 million more people would be uninsured by 2026 under the Senate bill.
David Jordan, director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, a nonprofit advocacy group funded by several health foundations, said the CBO score confirms that the Senate legislation is “bad for Kansas.”
“We urge Senators Moran and (Pat) Roberts to vote against this reckless legislation,” Jordan said.
“What’s the other alternative? I don’t see anything from the other side except, you know, single payer, and that’s socialized medicine,” Roberts said.
Members of the Kansas chapter of ADAPT, a national disability rights organization, planned demonstrations Tuesday at Moran’s offices in Pittsburg, Wichita and Hays.
“This (bill) is the biggest direct threat to independent living for older Kansans and Kansans with disabilities that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” organizer Ami Hyten said. “It’s time for Senator Moran to get off the fence and support the rights of Kansans with disabilities and older Kansans to appropriate, cost-effective home and community-based services and supports as he has done in the past.”
Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of kucr.org, Kansas Public Radio and KMUW covering health, education and politics. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.
SHAWNEE COUNTY– Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas man for alleged arson.
Just before 1p.m. Tuesday, fire crews responded to a report of a structure fire located at 1301 SW Harrison St. Apt. A21 in Topeka, according to a media release.
Upon arrival, fire crews advised light smoke coming from a residential apartment complex. Quick actions by occupants of the apartment complex led to early extinguishment of the fire, confining it to the front door area of apartment A21. Fire crews assisted in the complete extinguishment of smoldering materials.
Investigators were able to identify a suspect related to the fire and police arrested William Dean Foster, 37, for aggravated arson.
The investigation indicates the fire origin to be on the exterior deck/walkway of the apartment complex, outside of apartment A21. The cause of the fire has been classified as Incendiary; intentionally set.
One person was treated and released for minor injuries sustained as a result of fire. The estimated dollar loss – $4,700.00.
Foster has over a dozen previous convictions for theft, burglary and forgery in Shawnee, Reno and Aitchison County, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.
HOLTON, Kan. (AP) — Northeast Kansas jurors in the second trial of a man facing a string of sexual assault charges that have divided the small town of Holton heard testimony from one of his accusers.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the woman testified Tuesday against Jacob Ewing, detailing for more than an hour how he allegedly sexually attacked her in May of last year during a struggle after a party at his home. She said she told Ewing she didn’t want to have sex.
Another alleged victim was expected to testify Wednesday.
The trial involves allegations from two of the five women Ewing is charged with sexually assaulting. Additional trials are scheduled in August and October.
During Ewing’s first trial in April, he was acquitted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The state of Kansas says its divorce rate has dropped to the lowest levels since it began keeping yearly records in 1966.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment says last year’s divorce rate fell to 2.6 per 1,000 persons. There were 7,198 divorces statewide in 2016.
The department says that for much of the 1970s and 1980s, the divorce rate was above 5 per every 1,000 population.
The department offered no explanation for last year’s decline.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ two Republican senators are split over a GOP plan for overhauling health care that has been shelved.
Sen. Jerry Moran said Tuesday he was pleased by a delay of the Senate’s debate on the bill. He said it “missed the mark for Kansans” and did not have his support.
The Senate healthcare bill missed the mark for Kansans and therefore did not have my support.
Sen. Pat Roberts said Kansas “fared well” under the measure. Roberts said he’s open to further improvements but said Congress must pass legislation as soon as possible.
Both issued statements after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a debate would not occur until at least next month.
The GOP bill would roll back much of former President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 health care law. A congressional analysis Monday said 22 million more people would be uninsured by 2026.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The state is investigating allegations of physical abuse against toddlers at a YMCA day care center in Wichita.
Matt Keith, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, confirmed the agency is investigating allegations against a teacher at the South YMCA Early Learning Center but said he couldn’t provide details.
A mother of a 2-year-old boy at the day care said she was told by the Kansas Department for Children and Families that her son and two other children were allegedly shaken by a teacher. DCF spokeswoman Theresa Freed said she couldn’t confirm the agency’s involvement in an investigation.
Shelly Conrady, spokeswoman for Greater Wichita YMCA, said the organization is cooperating fully with the state investigation and is conducting its own investigation.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities say a Montana man accused of shooting at a Kansas state trooper on Interstate 70 in Sherman County is a bank robber dubbed “the AK-47 bandit” by the FBI.
Stephen Woolery, special agent in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, said Tuesday that Richard Gathercole of Roundup, Montana, was arrested last week in Lexington, Nebraska.
Gathercole is suspected of committing six bank robberies and an attempted bank robbery in California, Washington, Idaho, Nebraska and Iowa.
Gathercole is also accused of wounding a police officer in a shooting after a 2012 bank robbery in Chino, California.
Surveillance pictures of the AK-Bandit on February 29, 2012
The FBI has said he typically wore a mask and carried an AK-47 rifle with a drum magazine during the robberies.
A jailhouse phone call transcript showed Gathercole asked his mother to clear his home of guns after his arrest. Authorities found numerous homemade explosives inside the home on Saturday.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Gathercole has an attorney who could comment.
