ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) – A Missouri man has pleaded guilty in the fatal beating of his 77-year-old grandmother while he was drinking alcohol and taking prescription drugs.
Forrester
Robert Forrester pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree murder in last September’s death of Beverly Forrester of St. Joseph. The 29-year-old grandson faces up to life in prison when he’s sentenced later this year.
Robert Forrester told the judge he had been drinking whiskey and was on sedatives when he attacked his grandmother at her St. Joseph home.
The grandson said he remembered killing the victim but did not feel emotionally present during the attack.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty is resigning effective Sunday.
The Kansas City Democrat gave her resignation letter Friday to Gov. Mike Parson. She’s stepping down several months before her final term would have ended so that she can start a new job Monday as head of Jackson County’s Assessment Department.
Assistant Minority Floor Leader Gina Mitten will assume Beatty’s duties during the September veto session.
Beatty was first elected in 2010 and rose through the ranks to eventually head the party challenging a Republican supermajority in the Missouri House.
She told The Associated Press that the state still needs to pass ethics reform legislation and expand Medicaid. She also expressed hope for Democratic gains during the midterm elections and said she was open to running for office again.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence is defending President Donald Trump against claims that the president is too soft on Russia, telling a St. Louis crowd that Russian aggression has been met with “American strength and action.”
Pence spoke Thursday at a downtown hotel.
Pence said Trump’s policies are making a positive difference in St. Louis and around the country.
Trump has drawn criticism stemming from his performance on Monday at a summit meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Finland. But Pence listed sanctions and other steps the administration has taken against Russia.
More than 100 protesters stood and chanted behind barricades outside the hotel.
The event was hosted by America First Policies, a nonprofit organization set up to promote Trump’s policy agenda.
There is a slight chance for storms across central Missouri early this morning and again this afternoon however, most of the area is expected to remain dry through the weekend with very normal mid-summer temperatures. Expect highs in the mid 80s to low 90s through the weekend. Here’s the 7-day forecast from the National Weather Service:
Today: Sunny, with a high near 90. Calm wind becoming north around 6 mph in the afternoon.
Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 65. Light north northwest wind.
Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 88. Light west northwest wind becoming north northwest 6 to 11 mph in the morning.
Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 65. North wind 5 to 11 mph.
Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 89. North northeast wind 5 to 7 mph.
Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 66.
Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 87.
Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 68.
Tuesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 89.
Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 67.
Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 89.
Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 66.
DOUGLAS COUNTY —One person died in an accident just after 8:30p.m. Thursday in Douglas County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2001 Mitsubishi Utility vehicle driven by Elijah D. Gonzales, 24, Ava, was southbound on MO. 5 two miles south of Ava.
The vehicle traveled off the left side of the road, struck a concrete culvert, became airborne and overturned.
Gonzales was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Clinkinbeard funeral home. He was not wearing a seat belt, according to the MSHP.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska farmer has sued herbicide manufacturers, saying his neighbors’ use of the company products damaged his soybean crop last summer.
Shane Greckel filed the federal lawsuit last week against Monsanto and other companies whose products contain the herbicide dicamba.
Experts say problems have arisen with dicamba as farmers began to use it to kill weeds in soybean and cotton fields where specially engineered seeds had been planted to resist the herbicide. Because it can easily evaporate after being applied, the chemical sometimes settles on neighboring fields planted with seeds that are not resistant to dicamba.
Greckel says that’s what happened on his fields near Bloomfield.
Monsanto spokesman Jeff Neu told the Journal Star that the company hadn’t yet been served with the lawsuit but would review it.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley has charged a former Greenville city clerk with stealing more than $150,000.
The felony public corruption charges, announced Thursday, accused Pamela S. Birmingham of improperly writing herself several checks from city bank accounts between 2014 and 2016 and of falsifying city records.
A press release from Hawley’s office alleges the theft nearly bankrupted Greenville, a southeast Missouri town with a population of 511 in the 2010 census
A representative of the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department said Birmingham was booked, bonded and released Wednesday.
Birmingham’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.
A spokeswoman for Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway said an ongoing review of Greenville confirmed the misappropriation of funds.
A request for comment from the city of Greenville was not immediately returned.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A southern Missouri sheriff and a subordinate have been indicted on multiple felonies following a year in which more than 40 employees were fired or quit.
Sigman -photo Greene Co.
The indictment returned Wednesday charges Texas County Sheriff James Sigman and Lt. Deputy Jennifer Tomaszewski with assault, robbery, child endangerment, unlawful use of a weapon, harassment and two misdemeanors. Special prosecutor Don Trotter said Thursday that the assault charge stems from allegations that a mentally disabled man was attacked in the jail.
Sigman was elected in 2012 and remains in office, although the coroner is leading the department while Sigman is jailed in Greene County. His bond is set at $500,000 bond. No attorney is listed for him in online court records.
Trotter says Tomaszewski has been released on bond. Her phone rang unanswered.
JOHNSON COUNTY —One person died in an accident just before 10a.m. Thursday in Johnson County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2004 Honda Civic driven by Landon M. Daniel, 18, Lenexa, was westbound on Kansas 10 at Ridgewiew in the No. 1 lane.
The driver was not able to stop in time when traffic came to a halt and collided with a 2017 GMC Sierra driven by Scott R. Collins, 54, Lenexa. The collision pushed the GMC into a 2008 Chevy Utility vehicle driven by Mark W. Montgomery, 58, Monett, Missouri.
Daniel was transported to Overland Park Regional Medical where he died. Collins was transported to Shawnee Mission Medical Center. Montgomery was not injured. All three were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
A new system for hiring agencies to coordinate adoptions and foster care placements in Kansas will continue to let some groups cite religious beliefs to exclude some prospective parents — including gay couples.
The Department for Children and Families is switching to a grant system for child welfare. Some lawmakers expressed concern that making agencies grantees instead of contractors would open the door to discrimination. FILE PHOTO / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
The Department for Children and Families earlier this week had left lawmakers confused about whether a new grant system would extend those religious protections to the agencies taking over statewide foster care and family preservation contracts.
Agency officials on Wednesday said that some organizations won’t be able to impose their religious thinking when choosing parents, but that some still retain that power.
A law signed into effect this spring underscored the ability of the faith-based standards — promoted as a way to draw more agencies into the process.
DCF spokeswoman Taylor Forrest said none of the companies with grants to manage wide-ranging child welfare on behalf of the state can use the religious exemption to turn away families.
Yet other agencies — groups reimbursed based on how many foster placements or adoptions they set up for a child in state custody — can use the religious exemption.
The grant system splits Kansas into four family preservation regions and eight foster care regions. An agency that gets a grant to provide one of those services in a region oversees all kids and families referred in that region. They can’t use religious beliefs to turn anyone away.
A second class of placement agency handles more narrow duties. Groups that fall in that category can be tapped by DCF to find homes for individual kids. They’ll get reimbursed on a case-by-case basis for each kid they house with a family. Unlike the agencies hired to manage a range of services in a region, they can use their own religiously driven standards to choose which parents to use as foster and adoptive families.
At a Monday gathering of the state’s Child Welfare System Task Force, DCF secretary Gina Meier-Hummel said her department will also directly reimburse child placing agencies when the new system takes effect in July 2019. Under the current system, that work is usually done through a contractor.
She said the new system will give DCF more direct oversight of the welfare of children in foster care.
Those per-placement payouts could go to faith-based groups with moral objections to same-sex couples and divorced or single parents. Lawmakers who lost that fight in the spring legislative session maintained their objections.
“What is being done here is smoke and mirrors to provide public money to organizations that intend to discriminate on the basis of religious belief and to discriminate against LGBT Kansans,” said Rep. John Carmichael. He was the House Democrat assigned to work out a compromise between the House and Senate versions of the adoption bill that became law with Gov. Jeff Colyer’s signature.
Thomas Witt, director of the LGBT advocacy organization Equality Kansas, said no state dollars should go to agencies that shut out parents because they’re same-sex couples.
“These agencies want to tell some taxpayers, ‘You’re not good enough’,” he said.
