Temperatures today and into the weekend will rise into the middle to upper 90s with heat index readings between 100 and 105 degrees. A heat advisory will be in effect from noon on Friday through Sunday at 8 p.m., mainly along and north of I-70. A few action items to consider during this stretch of dangerous heat include: staying hydrated if working outdoors with breaks in the shade as often as possible, checking on elderly or those who are without AC, NEVER leave your children or pets in the vehicle, and limit strenuous outdoor activities if possible. Here’s the 7-day forecast from the National Weather Service:
Today: Sunny, with a high near 96. Heat index values as high as 100. South wind 10 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.
Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 75. South wind 9 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 21 mph.
Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 95. Heat index values as high as 100. South wind 10 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.
Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 75. South wind 9 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph.
Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 95. South wind 9 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph.
Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 76.
Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 92.
Monday Night: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71. Chance of precipitation is 40%.
Tuesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 1 p.m. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 84. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Tuesday Night: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 67. Chance of precipitation is 50%.
Wednesday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 82. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Wednesday Night: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 67. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Thursday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 86. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
After a shooting this week in St. Joseph that resulted in the death of a 2-year-old, the Buchanan County Sheriff and others are encouraging gun safety education and keeping guns out of the reach of children.
As previously reported, Alexzander S. Green was charged with first degree endangering the welfare of a child, a felony. According to charging documents, three other children were also at the residence with Green, ranging in age from two to six. According to witness statements, Green was asleep and left his loaded firearm unattended.
Sheriff Bill Puett said there are local resources available such as classes and training regarding gun safety and part of that safety starts with good practices at home or by the gun owner.
“Make sure that the weapons are locked up and secured and not able to be handled by individuals, children or whoever that shouldn’t obviously have access to those weapons,” Puett said. “We know that sometimes people forget, but this is such a important issue that people really need to stay focused and make sure that they keep those weapons secure. Part of it, I think, is responsibility of parents, gun owners, in the home to educate children, to educate folks that might be around.”
Puett adds that the Sheriff’s Office as well as some other law enforcement agencies offer free gun locks for anyone who may need one. The Sheriff’s Office provided gun locks to give away at an upcoming gun safety training class for children.
Shawn Harper with Midwest Best Handgun Instructors in Cosby said they offer gun safety classes for all ages. Harper said at an upcoming free class especially for children, they will teach the ABCs of gun safety along with allowing kids to shoot a gun, while supervised, at a shooting range to satisfy any curiosity they may have.
“I’m not exactly sure where kids get it, but when they see a gun, they have a compelling urge to pick it up and pull the trigger with no regard for the consequences because they don’t understand the consequences,” Harper said.
The upcoming June 23rd class is full but Harper said they will be offering more in the future. Visit Midwest Best Handgun Instructors on Facebook or call (816) 558-5300 for more information.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans and Democrats put aside the sectarian hostilities that have increasingly defined this town and came together on the baseball diamond Thursday, a year after bullets from a would-be mass assassin shook Congress to its core.
Democrats prevailed 21-5 in the 57th Congressional Baseball Game for Charity at Nationals Park. Kansas representatives Roger Marshall and Kevin Yoder played for the GOP.
But the night belonged to House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and all who hailed his return after he was shot during a team practice last spring in suburban Virginia.
— Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) June 14, 2018
The Louisiana Republican suffered life threatening injuries and has endured lengthy hospitalizations, multiple surgeries and painful rehabilitation. Months removed from struggling to walk, Scalise was honored before the game and started at second base for Republicans, fielding a ground ball and completing the put-out to first on the game’s first play.
“It’s been a long road to this day,” Scalise wrote on Twitter earlier in a day filled with media interviews, accolades and a Capitol Hill blood drive to commemorate the donations he received a year ago.
Scalise wore a Capitol Police cap to honor officers who worked the shooting last year, injuring gunman James Hodgkinson, who later died. Hodgkinson’s social media posts prior to the shooting suggest he targeted the Republican baseball team because of his political views.
Giving no mention to Hodgkinson, Scalise pronounced himself “grateful for the support and prayers” Thursday and added, “Let’s play some baseball.”
The House whip’s comeback was enough to leave Francis Kelly bursting with pride in the centerfield seats. “It’s just being an American — terror should not scare us,” the 41-year-old graphic designer said, sporting a necktie emblazoned with stars and stripes.
Still, the outpouring for Scalise obscured the daily realities of a capital city still bitterly divided on nearly every major policy debate, including how to regulate the weapons like those wielded on Scalise and his fellow Republicans a year ago in Alexandria, Virginia.
Scalise and other Republican team members said leading up to the game that he’s fine with where Congress is on gun laws, including after mass school shootings that have frequented headlines since last year’s near disaster.
There also were symbols of the so-called swamp that President Donald Trump and so many of the players have promised to drain. The game is a charity fundraiser, but the spectacle still involves private, guest-list parties, sponsored by corporate behemoths in the ballpark’s exclusive corners.
On the field, any victory Scalise celebrated had to come vicariously through his long friendship with fellow Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond. The former collegiate baseball player again starred on the mound and at the plate for the Democratic team, including a three-run, inside-the-park homerun.
The 2018 midterms loomed, as well. Many of the young staffers filling the stands wore the campaign shirts of their bosses whose fates in November will determine whether Republicans maintain their House and Senate majorities.
And, in the year of the #metoo movement, when record numbers of female candidates are running for Congress, California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan, a Democrat, and Utah Rep. Mia Love, a Republican, reached base and patrolled second base alongside the men that still dominate a Congress that is about four-fifths male.
“I grew up playing Tee-Ball & Little League & in high school I petitioned the principal to let me play baseball with the boys,” Barragan wrote on Twitter before the game, punctuating her remarks with #YesSheCan.
The baseball matchup, first played in 1909, typically raises hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for Washington-area charities. Last year, the game raised $1.5 million.
GALENA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a rapper who fled from a southeast Kansas traffic stop and feuded with police on Facebook brought along doughnuts when he surrendered.
Amos -photo Cherokee Co. Sheriff
The feud started after two people bailed from a vehicle that a Galena officer attempted to stop Sunday for speeding. Police posted screenshots of Tyrone Amos’ Facebook page in which he described himself hiding in a bush afterward. The department also changed its profile picture to a bush.
After Amos surrendered Wednesday with doughnuts, the department again changed its profile picture to a selfie of an officer with a man in handcuffs.
Amos was booked into the county jail on a $1,500 bond. The post ended with “One of ya’ll need to go #FreeM3GAPHON3,” a reference to Amos’ rap name.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – A top Missouri official has decided not to pay the legal bills for attorneys who represented former Gov. Eric Greitens’ office against potential impeachment proceedings.
Office of Administration Commissioner Sarah Steelman said Thursday that it appears the primary beneficiary of their work was Greitens individually and that the attorneys weren’t needed for the governor’s office itself.
Steelman provided The Associated Press copies of letters denying $118,000 of invoices from Eddie Greim’s Kansas City-based firm and $64,000 from Connecticut-based attorney Ross Garber.
Greim and Garber told the AP they hope Steelman will reconsider. Garber said it looks like the attorneys are caught in a “politically motivated fight.”
Greitens resigned June 1 while facing potential impeachment proceedings over allegations of sexual and political misconduct.
Steelman had been appointed administration commissioner by Greitens.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – The State Board of Education has reapproved five charter schools in its first meeting of the year after a standoff between lawmakers and former Gov. Eric Greitens left the group without enough members to meet for months.
The action on Thursday was possible because of two appointments made by Gov. Mike Parson earlier in the week.
The board has a backlog of items to tackle. The board president says members will resume the search for a new commissioner, a process that will likely take months.
The group had not met since December. After Greitens maneuvered last year to appoint new members to the board who would fire the former education commissioner, the Senate refused to approve his nominees, leaving the board without a quorum.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) – A southwest Missouri man who met a 13-year-old girl through the anonymous chat app Whisper has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for statutory rape.
Bailey -photo Joplin PD
The Joplin Globe reports that 26-year-old Timothy Bailey Jr., of Joplin, admitted Wednesday to the crime under a plea in which other child sex charges were dropped.
Police said he contacted the girl in June 2017, initially through Whisper. Bailey had sex with the girl at his residence and was arrested the following morning after police issued an endangered person advisory for her.
He was free on bond at the time for attempting to have sex with a 15-year-old in 2015. He’ll be allowed to serve the new sentence at the same time as the four-year sentence he’s currently serving for the earlier case.
Children entering the Kansas foster care system will soon have a new short-term place to stay in Kansas City.
A double bedroom in the new Kansas City youth residential center for girls. Each bed has a quilted toiletry bag, made by a volunteer. MADELINE FOX / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
With kids sleeping in their offices several nights a month, KVC Kansas, one of the state’s two foster care contractors, has been looking to open some sort of crisis center for the past year.
KVC Kansas kept 28 kids in its offices overnight in March, the most recent month for which data was available. The contractor says no children have had to sleep in its offices since May 18.
KVC had initially planned to open a basic shelter in January, but then realized that wouldn’t be enough. The kids most likely to be without a family member or a foster home to go to were kids with more serious behavioral or mental health problems.
The hospital arm of KVC’s parent company is setting up and licensing a facility equipped to handle kids who might be violent or prone to run away. The new youth residential center will provide mental health services and 24-hour supervision. The facility is scheduled to open later this month.
They’ve already got a space for boys, so the new space will be a comfortable spot for up to 20 girls.
In preparation, Vanessa Brouillette, KVC Hospitals’ operations coordinator, has been choosing paint colors, spreading bright comforters over twin beds, and screwing the legs onto cozy couches and chairs.
The entryway, she said, will be a “big, open, welcoming space.”
Carla Drescher, CEO of the Blue Door Project that will be operating the new youth center for KVC Hospitals, said she’s seeing more kids with intense needs than when she started working in child welfare more than 25 years ago.
“When I think back to when I first started in the field, it’s night and day, as far as the acuity level,” she said.
That’s been reflected in long waiting lists for psychiatric residential treatment facilities, which provide more intensive psychiatric treatment. Kids on the waitlist have typically ended up in centers like the one to be opened in Kansas City, Kansas. When there isn’t enough room there, some have spent a night or two in an office.
Stays in the new youth residential center will also likely be longer than in a shelter like KVC had initially envisioned, where less than a week would be the norm.
KVC is also shifting its plans for a shelter in Wichita to reflect higher acuity needs. Instead, KVC Hospitals will be opening a pediatric psychiatric hospital with more than 50 beds in that city in early 2019.
There are more than 7,500 kids in the Kansas foster care system, a number that has increased more than 40 percent since 2005. KVC spokeswoman Jenny Kutz said the tremendous jump has pushed the organization to consider more group housing options, something KVC has historically shied away from.
“We’re not in the shelter business, historically — we built our reputation on caring for kids in family homes,” she said. “We just saw this need.”
In the mid-1990s, 30 percent of children in the state’s foster care system were in group settings, including basic shelters, youth residential centers, and psychiatric treatment facilities. That fell to a low of 4.4 percent in 2013, but that share has started to tick up again. About 7.8 percent of the foster care population, 596 kids, were in group settings in May.
“This is a great solution for now,” Kutz said of the new Kansas City youth residential center. “But ultimately, as communities, as a state, we want to reduce the number of children who need foster care and find ways to care for them in their own home communities before they even get to this point.”
The Department for Children and Families is putting more emphasis on keeping families together with its new child welfare grants, which the agency opened for bids last week. In contrast to the current contracts where the same agencies handle both foster care and family preservation, under the grant structure each region will have an agency dedicated solely to that effort.
A 54-year-old man faces a felony charge after a domestic disturbance led to a shooting Monday night in St. Joseph.
As previously reported, dispatchers received a call around 10:30 p.m. Monday about a domestic disturbance in the 900 block of W. Valley St.
According to the probable cause statement, Shawn P. Flaherty is charged with one class-B felony count of first-degree domestic assault after shooting his wife in the leg with a handgun during a domestic dispute. The woman suffered serious, but non-life threatening injuries and was taken to Mosaic Life Care for treatment.
An arraignment is scheduled for Friday morning. Bond is denied.
Temperatures today and into the weekend will rise into the middle to upper 90s with heat index readings between 100 and 105 degrees. A heat advisory will be in effect from noon on Friday through Sunday at 8 p.m., mainly along and north of I-70. A few action items to consider during this stretch of dangerous heat include: staying hydrated if working outdoors with breaks in the shade as often as possible, checking on elderly or those who are without AC, NEVER leave your children or pets in the vehicle, and limit strenuous outdoor activities if possible. Here’s the 7-day forecast from the National Weather Service:
