Residents of Joplin, Mo., are delivering supplies in Oklahoma for residents affected by last month’s devastating tornado in Moore.

The Salvation Army says the group from Joplin will drop off their donations Monday morning in Oklahoma City. The Joplin residents gathered six pallets’ worth of items, including water, diapers, baby wipes and other hygiene products.

In May 2011, an EF5 tornado struck Joplin, killing 158 people.

The EF5 storm that hit Moore on May 20 destroyed neighborhoods and killed 24 people.

Documents show the mother of a Kansas City child found locked in a closet had been ordered to undergo a psychological exam years before, but a family court commissioner canceled the exam without explanation.

The then-10-year-old girl weighed only 32 pounds when she was found in the closet in June 2012.

She told authorities she wasn’t allowed to eat some days and hadn’t been to school since kindergarten.

The child’s mother has pleaded not guilty to child abuse, child endangerment and first-degree assault.

The Kansas City Star reports the child’s mother told investigators voices had been telling her to do bad things to the child since 2007.

When a psychological exam was scheduled for the mother in 2006, the commissioner canceled the exam and ordered her to therapy instead.

Authorities have captured an inmate who escaped from the Barton County Jail in Great Bend, Kansas.

The sheriff says officers who got a tip from the public found Lee Dean at a home in Great Bend about noon.

He was discovered missing last night. Dean was in jail for violating probation.

 

Authorities are investigating after a summer block party ended with gun fire and two people dead.

Police were called about 10:30 p.m. Saturday to the area of East 58th Terrace and College Avenue on a reported shooting.

Neighbors say up to 200 people at a block party when an argument broke out and someone started shooting.

One of the two shooting victims was transported to an area hospital where he later died. Another man was confirmed dead at the scene.

Investigators have not identified either victim. There is also no suspect information at this time.

Authorities have identified the teenager who drowned in a Lee’s Summit lake this past weekend.

Sixteen-year-old Emanuel Palmer was swimming with a group of friends at Lakewood Lakes on Saturday evening when he disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

Emergency crews pulled his body from about 15 to 20 feet of water.

Palmer was entering his junior year at Raytown High School.

Several thousand messages are piling up as Missouri Governor Jay Nixon decides whether to sign recently-passed legislation that would bolster gun rights.

The Republican-led Legislature approved measures that would tackle federal gun laws, allow certain trained school personnel to carry a concealed weapon and change the process for issuing concealed gun permits.

Nixon, a Democrat, has until mid-July to sign the bills, veto them or allow them to take effect without his signature.

As the governor decides what to do, some are seeking to sway his decision. Many are urging Nixon to sign the bills, calling them key to protecting Missouri residents’ rights. Some suggest he should veto and raise questions about the legality and wisdom of the legislation.

Authorities are investigating the death of a Missouri man whose body was found in a river in Henry County.

The Sheriff’s Department says the body of 29-year-old Justin Emmerton of rural Kingsville was found Wednesday in the Grand River between Urich and Hartwell.

Emmerton died of a gunshot wound.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol made the identification Thursday through a fingerprint match. The Jackson County Medical Examiner’s office determined the cause of death Friday. The Rural Missouri Major Case Squad is investigating.

Kingsville is about 50 miles southeast of Kansas City.

Search crews have found the body of a Missouri teen who hadn’t been seen since he bailed from a sinking boat last weekend.

Eighteen-year-old Brian VanMeter was on a boat with friends last Sunday on Big Creek in Johnson County.

Their boat hit something and began to take on water.

The two survivors told authorities that VanMeter tried to hang on to a limb but had to let go and they never saw him again.

His body was recovered Friday.

A KCK man has been sentenced to nine years in prison for trying to drown his 3-year-old son in a bathtub.

Twenty-four-year-old Lamonte Brown pleaded no contest in April to aggravated kidnapping and criminal threat. A charge of attempted murder was dropped.

Brown’s lawyer said at Friday’s sentencing her client did not remember the January 2012 incident.

The attorney said Brown had been unaware that the marijuana he had smoked was laced with the hallucinogenic drug PCP.

Brown’s girlfriend has testified she called police the day of the incident when she heard screams and splashing from a bathroom, where Brown had the 3-year-old boy and another child.

Police broke down the bathroom door and pulled the 3-year-old to safety.

Testimony in the trial of a former Kansas lawman has wrapped up with the defendant denying he shot and killed his wife and set their house on fire to hide evidence.

Closing arguments are scheduled Monday in the first-degree murder trial of Brett Seacat for the death of Vashti Seacat. The judge on Friday denied a routine defense motion for acquittal, leaving the verdict to the jury.

Seacat testified over two days and was the last witness jurors heard in 12 days of testimony.

The former instructor at the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center showed jurors photos of burns and blisters on his feet and singed hair on his calves that he sustained during the April 2011 fire. He recounted how he scooped up his two young children and took them outside, then ran back in to try to pull out his wife’s body.