SHAWNEE COUNTY — One person died in a fire Sunday in Shawnee County.  Just after 2p.m., fire crews responded to a structure fire located at 722 SW Taylor Street Apartment # 101 in Topeka, according to Fire Marshal Michael Martin.

Upon arrival, fire crews reported heavy smoke showing from a two story apartment building.

Fire suppression crews forced entry into apartment # 101 to perform a primary search of the dwelling.  While performing the search, 2 adult victims were located.

One victim was transported to a local hospital in critical condition and one was pronounced dead at the scene.

Authorities are still working to determine the cause of the fire. The Kansas Capital Area Red Cross responded to the scene and provided immediate assistance for 10 individuals. No smoke detectors were sounding within the apartment.  Martin did not release the name of the victims.

BALTIMORE (AP) — U.S. Catholic bishops abruptly postponed plans Monday to vote on proposed new steps to address the clergy sex abuse crisis roiling the church at the Vatican’s insistence.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was told on the eve of the bishop’s national meeting to delay action until after a Vatican-convened global meeting on sex abuse in February.

“We are not ourselves happy about this,” DiNardo told reporters in an unusual public display of frustration at a Vatican pronouncement.

“We are working very hard to move to action — and we’ll do it,” he said. “I think people in the church have a right to be skeptical. I think they also have a right to be hopeful.”

The bishops are meeting through Wednesday in Baltimore and had been expected to consider several steps to combat abuse, including a new code of conduct for themselves and the creation of a special commission, including lay experts, to review complaints against the bishops.

The bishops plan to proceed with discussing these proposals, which were drafted in September by the bishops’ Administrative Committee. Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, of Chicago, suggested the bishops could hold a non-binding vote on the proposals while in Baltimore and then convene a special assembly for a formal vote after considering the results of the global meeting in February.

“I realize that another meeting will create logistical challenges for the conference staff and the bishops’ schedules, but there is a grave urgency to this matter and we cannot delay,” Cupich said.

Abuse scandals have roiled the Roman Catholic Church worldwide for decades, but there have been major developments this year in the U.S.

In July, Pope Francis removed U.S. church leader Theodore McCarrick as a cardinal after church investigators said an allegation that he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Subsequently, several former seminarians and priests reported they too had been abused or harassed by McCarrick as adults, triggering debate over who might have known and covered up McCarrick’s misconduct.

In August, a grand jury report in Pennsylvania detailed decades of abuse and cover-up in six dioceses, alleging more than 1,000 children had been abused over the years by about 300 priests. Since then, a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia has begun working on a federal criminal case centered on child exploitation, and attorneys general in several other states have launched investigations.

DiNardo, in his address opening the bishops’ assembly, told survivors of clergy abuse he was “deeply sorry.”

“Some would say this is entirely a crisis of the past. It is not,” DiNardo said. “We must never victimize survivors over again by demanding they heal on our timeline.”

After DiNardo’s address, the bishops adjourned to a chapel for a daylong session of prayer that includes remarks by two survivors of clergy abuse who have worked to promote healing and reconciliation among other victims.

“Please understand the heart of the church is broken and you need to fix this now,'” Luis A. Torres Jr. told the bishops. “You were not called to be CEOs… You were not called to be princes. Be the priests that you were called to be. Please act now. Be better. Be good.”

Outside the conference hall, news of the delay in voting angered some protesters who were demanding the bishops take strong action against abuse.

“I know that they answer to the Holy See, but there’s a bigger imperative here, which is that children and victims need them to step forward,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, who works at the abuse database BishopAccountability.org. “By complying so meekly with what the pope has demanded of them today, they are surrendering their responsibility.”

Liz McCloskey, part of a coalition of concerned Catholics called the 5 Theses movement that has posted its proposals for reform on church doors in Baltimore and other cities, said the stakes couldn’t be higher. She said Catholics were “leaving in droves” in the absence of significant reforms and full transparency.

“Delaying taking any action in response to the sex abuse scandal is not only a public relations nightmare but a moral failing,” McCloskey told The Associated Press.

Her group’s proposals for the bishops include cooperating fully with investigations and releasing names of credibly accused clergy, committing to shedding regalia and living simply, and asking Pope Francis to put women in leadership posts.

DiNardo said the bishops didn’t complete a final draft of their proposed anti-abuse actions until Oct. 30 and the Vatican, with relatively short notice, sought to delay voting because of potential legal complications.

Nonetheless, John Gehring, the Catholic program director at a Washington-based clergy network called Faith in Public Life, said the Vatican “just made a big mistake.”

“The optics are terrible, and it sends a message, intended or not, that Rome doesn’t recognize the urgency of the moment,” Gehring tweeted .

HENRY COUNTY — One person died in an accident just before 8:30a.m. Monday in Henry County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2012 Toyota passenger vehicle driven by Maria E. Ramirez-Gudino, 31, Clinton, was eastbound on MO. 52 at County Road NE 251.   The driver lost control on the snow covered road, crossed the center of the road and struck a 2015 Toyota passenger vehicle driven by Kathleen J. Miller, 62, Windsor, nearly head-on.

Miller, Ramirez-Gudino and a passenger in her vehicle Jonathan A. Mendoza-Ramirez, 5, Clinton, were transported to Golden Valley Hospital where Miller died.

All three were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the MSHP.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – A  lawyer who tried to get the financial records of a dark money group associated with former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has announced that he is running for attorney general.

Elad Gross said Monday that he is running as a Democrat in the 2020 attorney general’s election.

Gross had sued the nonprofit A New Missouri seeking to inspect its financial records. A Cole County judge dismissed the case last week, but Gross says he will appeal.

A New Missouri does not have to disclose its donors under federal law, but Gross claimed a right to see its records under state law.

The 30-year-old Gross said he served in the attorney general’s office from 2014 to 2016 under former Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster.

By Dan Margolies

Seven of 20 Kansas City area hospitals got A’s in patient safety, according to a new report, while nine got B’s and four got C’s.

The grades were assigned by The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit that twice a year rates 2,600 general acute-care hospitals across the country on patient safety measures.

The 28 performance measures include handwashing practices, blood infections and patient falls. Leapfrog uses the measures to come up with a single letter grade ranging from A to F, meant to show how effective a hospital is in keeping patients safe from preventable harm and medical errors.

“Over 33,000 lives could be saved if all hospitals performed at the level of A-graded hospitals,” Leapfrog says.

Some health experts say 4 percent of patients acquire infections in hospitals. Leapfrog says that an analysis it commissioned from the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine estimates 206,021 avoidable deaths occur in U.S. hospitals each year – and Leapfrog says that’s probably an underestimate.

The analysis also found that hospitals receiving Ds and Fs carry a nearly 50 percent greater risk of mortality than A-graded hospitals.

Listed below are the Kansas City-area hospitals and the grades they received:

A grades: 

• The University of Kansas Hospital
• Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City
• Shawnee Mission Medical Center
• Providence Medical Center
• Centerpoint Medical Center
• St. Mary’s Medical Center
• Lee’s Summit Medical Center

B grades:

• Research Medical Center (main campus)
• Saint Luke’s North Hospital
• St. Joseph Medical Center
• Overland Park Regional Medical Center
• Saint Luke’s South Medical Hospital
• Liberty Hospital
• Saint Luke’s East Hospital
• Belton Regional Medical Center
• Lawrence Memorial Hospital

C grades:

• Truman Medical Center Hospital Hill
• North Kansas City Hospital
• Menorah Medical Center
• Olathe Medical Center

Dave Dillon, a spokesman for the Missouri Hospital Association, noted that there are a lot of different hospital rating measures and they don’t always look at the same data.

The Missouri Hospital Association, for example, does its own survey, FocusOnHospitals.com, that includes all Missouri hospitals. (Leapfrog’s report card excludes specialty hospitals such as children’s hospitals, as well as critical access hospitals located in rural areas.)

“Additionally, not all of the data used is current,” Dillon said in an email. “So, a hospital might be performing better or worse, depending on the dataset and what practices the hospital has put in place to address specific issues.”

Dillon said hospitals have spent “significant amounts of time and energy to improve quality and patient safety.”

“As all hospitals get better, the competition to keep up gets fierce,” he said.

Leapfrog cautions that patients should never refuse emergency care because of a hospital’s safety grade but rather use the grades as a guide for planned hospitalizations and potential emergencies.

Its report card draws on data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Agency for Healthcare Research Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey Health Information Technology Supplement and Leapfrog’s own hospital survey.

Leapfrog also ranks states, based on their number of “A” hospitals compared to the total number of hospitals graded. Kansas ranked #24, with nearly a third of its hospitals receiving an A grade, while Missouri ranked #34, with about 23 percent of its hospitals receiving an A grade.

Kansas moved up three notches from Leapfrog’s last survey in spring 2018; Missouri dropped 21 notches.

The top five jurisdictions were New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, Massachusetts and Texas. The bottom five were Connecticut, Nebraska, Washington, D.C., Delaware and North Dakota.

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

JOHNSON COUNTY— Investigators are working to determine the cause of a fatal Sunday night house fire in Johnson County.

Just after 9p.m. responded to a house fire in the 7500 Block of Kessler Lane, according to a media release. First units on the scene found smoke and fire coming from the split-level single family residence. Crews attacked the blaze on the upper level while other crews searched for occupants.

A woman later identified as 67-year-old Leanora Marks was pulled from the basement of the home. She was unresponsive at the scene and transported to a local hospital in critical condition where she died.

It appears the fire started in the basement where the victim was found but the majority of the damage was to the home’s upper level. The blaze was brought under control in about 30 minutes. The home suffered significant smoke damage.

POINT LOOKOUT, Mo. (AP) – A convicted felon has been charged with abducting two Christian college students and forcing them to perform sex acts on each other at gunpoint after they violated curfew and were locked out of their southwest Missouri campus.

49-year-old Robert Hyslop is jailed without bond on charges of kidnapping, sexual abuse and sodomy. No attorney is listed for him in online court record.

Charging documents say the College of the Ozarks students fell asleep in a commuter parking lot last month because the campus’ front gate was locked when they returned after curfew. The documents say Hyslop made the man and woman drive to a highway lookout where he forced them to perform sex acts. Hyslop also is accused of making the woman touch him sexually.

OLATHE — Police in Olathe reported Monday morning they had located 57-year-old Ralph Terrell, Jr.and he is safe.  Police released no additional details.

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OLATHE — Authorities are asking the public for help to locate a missing northeast Kansas man. Ralph Terrell, Jr., 57, was last seen at 5p.m. Sunday in the 500 Block of South Rogers Road, according to a media release from police.

He is described at 5-foot-8, approximately 134 pounds with brown hair and eyes. He was wearing a grey hoodie and dark sweat pants.
He was on foot and does not have access to a vehicle. He has a medical condition which requires medication which he does not have, according to police.

WILLARD, Mo. (AP) – Officials say a southwest Missouri high school coach has died in a hunting accident.

24-year-old Justin Atchison was killed Saturday on the first day of the deer firearm season. Willard Fire Protection District battalion chief Kevin Samsel says the Greene County Sheriff’s Office is handling the investigation.

Willard High School’s head football coach, Brock Roweton, says coaches, parents and players are “completely heartbroken” by the death of the assistant football and baseball coach.

Roweton says Atchison was the quarterback and a standout pitcher at Willard before playing two years of collegiate baseball at Evangel University. After a shoulder injury, Atchison turned to coaching.

Head baseball coach Scott McGee says Atchison was studying to become a science teacher and also spent time working on a farm.