KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A former Missouri police officer has pleaded guilty to violating the constitutional rights of a minor by deliberately dropping the restrained teenager face-first onto the ground.

Federal prosecutors in Kansas City on Friday announced that former Independence officer Timothy Runnels admitted his role in a Sept. 14, 2014, confrontation with 17-year-old Bryce Masters.

Prosecutors say Runnels used a stun gun on Masters during a traffic stop even though the youth was not a threat. Masters went into cardiac arrest and was placed in a medically induced coma and treated for lack of oxygen to the brain.

He was released from the hospital a week later.

Runnels was indicted in March on four federal charges accusing him of using excessive force and hindering the police department’s investigation of the incident.

DETROIT (AP) — An Alabama company that made a tractor-trailer hitch involved in a deadly Ohio crash last year is bowing to government pressure and will recall 6,800 hitches.

Fontaine Fifth Wheel of Trussville, Alabama, agreed to the recall in August, according to documents posted Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The safety agency began investigating the hitches in June, 17 months after a 12-ton semi-trailer came loose from its tractor and plowed into oncoming traffic near Cincinnati. Two men driving pickup trucks were killed in the crash on U.S. 50.

Fontaine says in documents filed with the agency that the hitch locking mechanisms can be damaged over time by truck operators who don’t follow proper coupling and maintenance procedures.

Fontaine will replace the defective hitches with a different model.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Delta Airlines flight traveling from Minnesota to Texas has been diverted to Wichita after being struck by lightning.

According to Wichita Airport Authority spokeswoman Valerie Wise, the aircraft operated by ExpressJet, a Delta regional connection carrier, was struck by lightning on its left wing Thursday evening after encountering storms near Manhattan, Kansas. The flight had left Minneapolis and was headed toward San Antonio.

Wise said passengers reported smelling smoke in the cabin before the flight safely landed at Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita just before 7:30 p.m.

None of the 65 people onboard were injured. Wise said she did not have any reports of damage to the plane.

NEW MADRID, Mo. (AP) — A southeastern Missouri man has pleaded guilty to felony charges related to his 2013 baseball bat attack that killed his father and critically injured his mother.

The Daily American Republic newspaper of Poplar Bluff reports 29-year-old Matthew Dale Jenkins entered the plea this week.

Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Kevin Barbour agreed to drop related charges of felony assault and two counts of armed criminal action.

Authorities say Jenkins attacked 56-year-old father Carl Don Jenkins and that man’s 62-year-old wife, Vicki Jenkins in their Poplar Bluff home in January 2013. Carl Jenkins died 15 days later, and Vicki Jenkins died last October.

Barbour says he’ll recommend a 20-year sentence for Jenkins, who is from Poplar Bluff. Sentencing is set for Oct. 27

NEW YORK (AP) — The mournful playing of taps has marked the conclusion of the World Trade Center ceremony marking the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

There was a smattering of applause Friday when the final victim’s name was read at ground zero. Then people began milling around the memorial plaza in lower Manhattan.

Linda Spinella, of Wayne, New Jersey, was there to honor her brother, Mark Zangrilli. The father of two worked for an insurance company in the south tower.

Spinella blinked back tears and said she doesn’t like to think about what happened that day.

Instead, she concentrates on the the happy memories, like her brother’s “goofy jokes and the way he loved his kids.”

 

CONWAY SPRINGS, Kan. (AP) — Vandals have targeted multiple cemeteries in the south-central Kansas town of Conway Springs.

The Conway Springs Police Department shared on its Facebook page Wednesday that the problem should make people “sick, sad and angry.”

Conway Springs Police Chief Kelley Zellner says cemeteries on the town’s south, north and east side have been targets. He says that over the weekend, 14 headstones in the north cemetery were vandalized. Thirteen were knocked off of their bases or completely pushed over; 4 of the 13 headstones were broken.

Zellner urged anyone with information to call authorities.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas regulators have approved a 9 percent increase in Kansas City Power & Light’s annual electric rates, raising them less than the utility sought.

But the three-member Kansas Corporation Commission split over how much profit KCP&L’s stockholders should be allowed to earn. The final rate is 9.3 percent.

The commission said KCP&L’s charges for its 247,000 customers in northeast Kansas will increase nearly $49 million a year. The company said the average residential customer would see a monthly increase of $7.73 starting in October.

Missouri regulators approved an 11.7 percent rate increase for KCP&L customers there.

In Kansas, KCP&L proposed boosting annual revenues by $67 million, or 12.5 percent and $11.67 a month for an average residential customer.

KCP&L argued it needed additional revenues to pay for power plant upgrades.

AFFTON, Mo. (AP) — Missouri businesses could see another drop in workers’ compensation insurance premiums next year.  Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon offered that assessment during a Thursday visit to an Affton carpenters’ training center.

The governor said early figures from the National Council on Compensation Insurance propose a dip of 2.4 percent from loss costs for 2015 claims. Loss projections typically are used by insurers when setting rates.

The industry with the largest suggested decrease is contracting, which had a proposed drop of 4.9 percent in loss costs.

Missouri’s insurance department says fewer accidents and injuries among workers and stable costs for claims led to the lower rate recommendation.

The national council last year projected a 3.7 percent drop in loss costs.

Missouri’s insurance department will recommend its own loss costs after reviewing the national council’s projections.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Several former inmates and a former jail guard at the Jackson County jail, which is under investigation over excessive force allegations, claim that the abusive practices go back several years.  Two ex-inmates tell The Kansas City Star that they were victims of gratuitous violence by corrections center officers.

The parents of a third former inmate allege their son suffered broken bones after Critical Incident Response Team members went too far in restraining him.

The former guard says it’s common for other guards to use excessive force when he worked at the jail in 2011.

The FBI is investigating allegations that corrections officers used excessive force against inmates who were retrained. County officials have declined to discuss the specifics of the allegations that led up to the FBI’s involvement.