A deer running across an interstate highway on the northern edge of Kansas City is blamed for the death of a motorcyclist and injuries to his son after a chain-reaction crash.
Anthony Dunster of Kansas City was killed.
The crash happened around 7 p.m. Saturday in the southbound lanes of Interstate 435 near Missouri Highway 152.
Police say several deer darted onto the interstate, causing vehicles to slam on their brakes. Police Sgt. Bill Mahoney says Dunster, 41, crashed his motorcycle into the back of one of those cars.
Dunster’s 11-year-old son was riding on the back of the Harley Davidson, but he was thrown into the grass and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
Carlos Boles
Six federal marshals are being recognized for bravery related to a 2011 St. Louis gunfight that killed one of their own from Illinois and a drug suspect they were looking to arrest.
Federal lawmakers from Missouri and Illinois were expected to attend Monday’s ceremony in St. Louis honoring the law enforcers with the Congressional Badge of Bravery.
Fugitive Carlos Boles was shot and killed in March 2011.
law enforcers were trying to arrest him in his St. Louis home on drug and assault charges. Also killed was John Perry, a 48-year-old Illinois native who’d been with the U.S. Marshals Service for nearly 10 years.
Two other law enforcers were wounded.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois says Monday’s honorees rescued the wounded colleagues without regard for their own safety.
Kyle Flack
The man charged with killing four people on an eastern Kansas farm is set to appear in court Monday afternoon.
Twenty-seven-year-old Kyle Flack is being held on $10 million bond. He is charged with capital murder and first-degree murder in the deaths of 18-month-old Lana Leigh Bailey, her mother, 21-year-old Kaylie Bailey, and 30-year-old Andrew Stout. He also is charged first-degree murder in the death of 31-year-old Steven White.
Flack was picked up for questioning early Wednesday in Emporia, where officers found the car that Bailey had been driving when she was last seen.
A body that was believed to be the toddler’s was found over the weekend, and authorities are working to positively identify it. The adults’ bodies were found earlier in the week.
Lana BaileyAn intensive search of a farm near Ottawa, Kansas has turned up a body believed to be that of a missing 18-month-old girl.
“It is with great sadness that I report a body found in Osage County, Kansas, is believed to be the remains of 18-month-old Lana Bailey,” Franklin County Sheriff Jeff Richards said in the statement.
Evidence collected Saturday led investigators to believe it was the infant’s body, his statement said without elaboration.
“We hope that a forensic examination will make a final identification,” Richards added. “Until the identity is confirmed investigators will continue following up on all tips, leads and information connected to this crime.”
The statement did not provide any details of where the body was discovered or how the infant had died. But his statement said a crime scene unit was called to the area “to process this new crime scene.”
“It is not the outcome we’d hoped for but we knew we couldn’t stop searching until Lana was home,” the statement said.
“I want the family of Lana, and all the victims, to know that this investigation will continue until we are confident we have collected as much evidence as we can to ensure justice is served on behalf of all four victims.”
Kyle Flack
Kyle Flack was charged Friday with capital murder as officials investigated the deaths of Lana Bailey’s 21-year-old mother, Kaylie Bailey, and 30-year-old Andrew Stout. The 27-year-old convicted felon also was charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder in those deaths as well as that of 31-year-old Steven White, authorities have said.
Franklin County Attorney Stephen Hunting said Friday that a firearm was used against the victims at the farm.
He did not elaborate on whether that meant they were fatally shot. Authorities have not commented on a motive.
Richards said earlier that the extensive investigation of what he called a “horrific crime” had taken a toll and that members of the investigative team have required medical attention after searching in difficult areas. Others sought counsel from a chaplain.
Missouri lawmakers have passed a budget that could force Governor Jay Nixon to choose between aiding children and aiding low-income seniors. The package assumes more than $55 million of savings by eliminating tax breaks for low-income seniors and spends it on early childhood programs for the developmentally disabled.
Lawmakers have gone home for a three-day weekend before wrapping up the 2013 legislative session.
The House and Senate both scrapped a potential Friday session after they completed work Thursday on the budget. They had faced a constitutional deadline to send the governor a budget by 6 p.m. Friday.
The Legislature must wrap up work on other bills by 6 p.m. on May 17.
Lawmakers have already sent Gov.Nixon a potential $700 million income tax cut.
Next week, legislators are expected to consider a measure to revamp Missouri’s tax credit programs. The plan under negotiation would pare back existing tax breaks for historic buildings and low-income housing while creating new several new business incentives.
A St. Louis man is jailed following the death of his 2-year-old son.
Police were called Thursday night to a home where the boy was unresponsive. He died a short time later.
Police say the 28-year-old father admitted hitting the child in the chest. Police did not say why. The victim’s twin brother and a 4-year-old were taken from the home and are in protective custody.
An elderly southwest Missouri woman is being treated for burns she received in a fire that killed her husband.
The Neosho Fire Department says the fire Wednesday night a mile east of Neosho killed 80-year-old Charles M. Parsons.
His wife, 74-year-old Doris Parsons, is hospitalized with burns to her head and arms.
Newton County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Chris Jennings says when emergency workers arrived, they found Doris Parsons outside the house trying to break out a window in an effort to save her husband.
The state fire marshal is investigating the cause of the fire.
A homeless man has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for beating another homeless man to death over cigarettes.
Forty-one-year-old Patrick R. Perkins was sentenced Thursday for involuntary manslaughter and robbery in the death of 41-year-old Marshall K. Hauschulz.
Police say the beating occurred as Perkins was robbing Hauschulz of cigarettes in December 2011.
State prison records show Perkins was paroled from prison six weeks before he killed Hauschulz. He had served time for a Reno County aggravated battery conviction and also had a 1994 Saline County conviction for aggravated robbery.
A post-conviction hearing continues for a southwest Missouri man serving four consecutive life sentences for the 2008 kidnapping and rape of a 7-year-old girl.
Forty-two-year-old Jeffery Allen Dickson is challenging DNA test results reported by the Missouri Highway Patrol’s state crime lab. A DNA analyst who linked Dickson to the attack is among the scheduled witnesses Friday.
A Greene County jury convicted Dickson of sexually assaulting the child and forcing her to smoke drugs before setting a fire to cover up his crimes. He remains at the Potosi Correctional Center in southeast Missouri.
Dickson’s public defender says new evidence shows that his DNA sample was contaminated when the Missouri state crime lab mixed it with other samples. Prosecutors are challenging that assertion with their own DNA test results.
Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri is continuing to block confirmation of the nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, part of his effort to speed up work on the St. Johns Bayou/New Madrid Floodway project in southeast Missouri.
Democratic President Barack Obama has nominated Gina McCarthy to lead the EPA.
Blunt, a Republican, has blocked the nomination for two months and said Thursday he’ll continue to do so until government agencies reach consensus and move forward on the floodway project.
Blunt and his Democratic colleague from Missouri, Claire McCaskill, want resolution of the long-delayed project that would build a quarter-mile levee and install infrastructure to protect farmland and small towns from the Mississippi River.
The project has been delayed for six years over environmental rules.
A deer running across an interstate highway on the northern edge of Kansas City is blamed for the death of a motorcyclist and injuries to his son after a chain-reaction crash.
