SHELL KNOB, Mo. (AP) – Authorities in southwestern Missouri say two Stone County sheriff’s deputies suffered injuries while trying to nab a suspect.

Officials say the incident happened Friday when the deputies initiated a traffic stop in Shell Knob. The deputies say the driver refused to stop, leading to a chase. Officials say the suspect slammed on his brakes twice during the chase, causing the deputies’ car to hit the vehicle.

Officials say the driver then fled on foot and was capture after a struggle in which deputies deployed a stun gun.

The sheriff’s office says a 2-year-old boy was later found in the back of the suspect’s vehicle.

Officials say the deputies suffered minor injuries and were released from a hospital Friday night.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) – A man who is fighting deportation from Kansas to his native Bangladesh acknowledges he made mistakes years ago while trying to stay in the U.S. and hopes immigration officials will let him remain in the country he calls home.

Syed Ahmed Jamal spoke to The Kansas City Star during a party Wednesday in Lawrence, where supporters celebrated his release from a Missouri jail pending a review of his case.

Jamal was arrested by immigration officials on Jan. 24 at his Lawrence home for overstaying his visa. He was being flown back to Bangladesh last month when an immigration panel granted a temporary stay. He was released from jail Tuesday.

Jamal says he made a mistake in 2006, when he waited too long to switch from a work visa to a student visa.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri lawmakers are returning to the Statehouse on Monday for the second half of the 2018 legislative session.

Republican legislative leaders have pledged to continue business as usual despite turmoil in the governor’s office. Republican Gov. Eric Greitens faces trouble on multiple fronts, from a grand jury indictment on a felony invasion-of-privacy charge to state House and attorney general’s office investigations.

Aside from movement on legislation to help children in foster care, the governor’s priorities haven’t made much progress so far.

Lawmakers have taken the lead on tax proposals. And House and Senate budgeters are working to avoid funding cuts to public higher education proposed by Greitens.

Other issues likely to come up before the session’s May end include increasing penalties for misusing welfare and business-friendly changes to labor laws.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands are gathering in Washington Saturday for a protest that organizers claim will be a defining moment in the long-simmering national debate over gun-control legislation.

Demonstrators were gathering at Theis Park in Kansas City on Saturday from noon to 4 pm as part of the nationwide effort to advocate for weapons reform.

In Washington, organizers of the March for Our Lives rally hoped to draw 500,000 protesters; that would match last year’s women’s march and make this one of the largest Washington protests since the Vietnam era. It would also bolster claims that the nation is ready to enact sweeping changes to its gun control laws. More than 800 marches are planned in cities across America and dozens of locations overseas to be held at roughly the same time.

Washington is generally nonchalant about protests, but Saturday’s gathering has prompted more attention and speculation than usual. Washington officials say they are prepared to handle the crowds — more prepared than they were for the women’s march, which far exceeded the organizers’ official predictions of 300,000.

The protesters, many of them high school students, claim that the youth leadership of this initiative is what will set it apart from previous attempts to enact stronger gun-control legislation.

In the wake of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the students have tapped into a powerful current of pro-gun control sentiment that has been building for years. They have also partnered with well-funded liberal groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control advocacy group founded by former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Polls indicate that public opinion nationwide may indeed be shifting on an issue that has simmered for generations, and through dozens of mass shootings. A new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 69 percent of Americans think gun laws in the United States should be tightened. That’s up from 61 percent who said the same in October of 2016 and 55 percent when the AP first asked the question in October of 2013. Overall, 90 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of gun owners now favor stricter gun control laws.

But even with claims of historic social momentum on the issue of gun control, the AP poll also found that nearly half of Americans do not expect elected officials to take action. Among the questions facing march organizers and participants will be how to translate this one-day event, regardless of turnout, into meaningful legislative change.

One way is by channeling the current energy into mid-term congressional elections this fall. Students in Florida have focused on youth voter registration and there will be a registration booth at the Saturday rally.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Almost 1,000 veterans in Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois were denied care at non-VA facilities because their wait times were incorrectly reported, an audit released last week concludes.

The report, by the Office of Inspector General for the Veterans Health Administration, found that 18 percent of appointments for new patients at VA facilities in the three states had wait times longer than 30 days. The facilities’ own electronic scheduling systems, however, showed only 10 percent had wait times of more than 30 days.

The inaccurate wait-time data meant that veterans were not identified as eligible for treatment through the VA’s Choice program, which allows veterans who face wait times of more than 30 days, or have to travel more than 40 miles to a VA facility, to seek care at non-VA facilities.

Because wait times were not accurately measured, the inspector general report estimated that staff failed to offer 970 patients the option of receiving care through the Choice program.

The VA came under fire in 2014 amid disclosures that the VA Medical Center in Phoenix had falsified records to conceal long wait times. The scandal prompted a shakeup in the VA health system, including the resignation of Eric K. Shinseki, the secretary of Veterans Affairs. Since then, inspector general reports have found similar problems at other VA facilities across the country.

The new report looked at wait times in the VA region that includes VA facilities in Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia and Poplar Bluff, Missouri; Wichita, Topeka and Leavenworth, Kansas; and Marion, Illinois. The region is known as VISN 15 (VISN stand for Veterans Integrated Service Network and encompasses VA medical centers and clinics in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana and Arkansas).

“The main thing that is most troubling to me is that the through lines and the themes that contributed to the problems we were seeing with wait times at so many of the facilities as far back as 2014 still seem to be in place,” said Charles Hughes, a policy analyst with the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute who has written about VA wait times.

“I’m not talking about willful manipulation or anything in that vein, but just inconsistent enforcement of the processes that are supposed to be in place,” Hughes said. “Sometimes facility staff doesn’t quite understand what they’re supposed to be doing and the end result is more veterans are waiting longer than the data indicates. And in a lot of cases that can lead to them not getting timely care or being inappropriately not made eligible for the Choice program.”

Kevin T. Arnhold, a spokesman for VISN 15, said in an email that the facilities “appreciate the inspector general’s review and we welcome the oversight because we know it makes us better.”

“And while this report highlighted opportunities for improvement with respect to our wait times, it also validates VISN 15’s efforts to deliver timely health care to Veterans,” he said. “Nevertheless, we are taking this opportunity to redouble our efforts to provide timely, high-quality care to those who have worn the uniform.”

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, said in an email to KCUR that the report “clearly shows there’s more work that needs to be done to ensure wait times are being reported accurately, consults are being managed effectively, and veterans who are eligible for the Choice program are able to get the care they need within 30 days.”

Blunt last year co-sponsored legislation called the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, aimed at protecting whistleblowers while making it easier to fire employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, said via email that McCaskill was reviewing the inspector general report “but finds many aspects of the audit concerning and will be demanding additional information from the VA.”

The report follows a similar audit of another VA region last year, which also found facilities failing to maintain accurate data on wait times.

Neither report reviewed the quality of the health care provided at the facilities. Rather, they measured wait times for new patients and the accuracy of the facilities’ wait-time data.

The VA health system comprises 1,700 hospitals and clinics, making it the country’s largest integrated health care system.

The new inspector general report says that “VA data reliability continues to be a high-risk area.”

In addition to finding that 18 percent of appointments for new patients overall had wait times exceeding 30 days, the report also found that the wait times for 38 percent of new mental health or specialty care appointments were inaccurate. The report said the average wait time for the 18 percent cohort was 53 days.

“Staff continued to enter the wrong date in the scheduling system primarily because VISN 15 and facility management did not ensure staff consistently implemented VHA’s scheduling requirements,” the report stated.

“I think a lot of it is just kind of, I don’t want to say incompetence, but misunderstanding or mistakes or just poor performance,” Hughes, of the Manhattan Institute, said.

He added: “It is a little disheartening that we’re into 2018 now and still having a lot of these same issues.”

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

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) – A Kansas City-area woman feels like she’s reliving her daughter’s death after discovering a lock of hair she kept of the 3-year-old has been stolen from her car.

Jaime Hampel told Independence Police she found her car had been ransacked Tuesday night. Among the items stolen was a wallet containing a lock of hair that belonged to Ryan Hampel, who died in a September car crash.

Hampel says the lock of hair was a little blonde curl with a pink bow that had white polka dots. It’s Hampel’s most tangible memento of her daughter.

The mother says the little bag with Ryan’s hair is the only thing she really cares about, and hopes the alleged thief will hear her story and return it.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The FBI says one of its first responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has died of brain cancer linked to exposure to contaminants.

Special Agent Melissa S. Morrow died Thursday at the age of 48.

The agency said in a news release Friday that Morrow made the “ultimate sacrifice,” and her death has been classified as a line-of-duty death. She had been certified by the World Trade Center Health Program and the Sept. 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Morrow joined the FBI in 1995 and worked at its Washington field office prior to transferring to the Kansas City field office.

She was a first responder to the Pentagon crash site and the Alexandria evidence warehouse. The FBI says she spent 10 weeks recovering and processing evidence at the site.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Latest on charges filed in the death of a 10-year-old boy on a waterslide at a Kansas waterpark (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

A grand jury has indicted a corporation for involuntary manslaughter after a 10-year-old boy died on a giant waterslide at one of the company’s water parks in Kansas.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced Friday that Schlitterbahn Waterpark of Kansas City, Kansas, was indicted along with a former executive in the August 2016 death of Caleb Schwab, who was decapitated on the 17-story “Verruckt” waterslide.

Schmidt said the indictments also involve injuries suffered by 13 other people, including four children, who rode on the slide. The executive, Tyler Miles, and Schlitterbahn also face charges of interference with law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for Schlitterbahn didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

2:30 p.m.

A former executive for Schlitterbahn pleaded not guilty Friday to involuntary manslaughter in the death of a 10-year-old boy who was decapitated on a waterslide at the Kansas water park.

Twenty-nine-year-old Tyler Austin Milesa, former operations director for the company, was charged Friday in the August 2016 death of Caleb Schwab at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kansas.

Miles is the only person criminally charged so far in the boy’s death, which occurred when the raft he was on hit a pole and netting on the 17-story Verruckt waterslide. Miles also faces 19 other charges.

Schlitterbahn officials defended Miles after the charges were filed, saying they stood by him and were shocked by the allegations against him.

_____

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — An executive with the Kansas water park where a 10-year-old boy died on a giant waterslide has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Tyler Austin Miles, an operations director for Schlitterbahn, was booked into the Wyandotte County jail Friday and is being held on $50,000 bond.

Caleb Schwab died in August 2016 on the 17-story Verruckt water slide at the park in western Kansas City, Kansas. An autopsy revealed the boy was decapitated when the raft that he and two women were on went airborne. It hit a pole that supported nets that were designed to keep riders from flying off the ride.

Winter Prospapio, a spokeswoman for Schlitterbahn, said the company was “deeply disappointed” that an individual was charged for the “terrible accident.”