FAIRWAY, Kan. (AP) — Prosecutors have found that police were justified in shooting and wounding a man believed to have been firing shots near a suburban Kansas City elementary school.

The Johnson County, Kansas, District Attorney’s Office made the announcement Friday after reviewing last month’s shooting of 26-year-old Dylan Ruffin.

Court records say the shooting happened after he exited a house with a gun as children were being dismissed from Highlands Elementary in the Shawnee Mission School District. Extra security was present because shots had struck the school earlier in the day.

As police ordered the man to drop the weapon, parents ran and threw themselves on children. No one else was injured.

Ruffin is charged with three counts of aggravated assault on an officer and discharging a gun in an occupied dwelling.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A truck driver from Greeley, Colorado, is charged with five counts of vehicular homicide for a fiery 2017 crash that killed five people on the Kansas Turnpike near Bonner Springs.

Kenny B. Ford, 58, appeared without an attorney Friday in a Leaveworth County courtroom. The misdemeanor charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail on each count.

Traffic was backed up due to road construction on July 11, 2017, when Ford’s semi struck an SUV driven by 61-year-old Teresa J. Butler of Urbana, Illinois. Butler and her passenger, 63-year-old Karen Lynn Kennedy of New Palestine, Illinois, were killed.

The truck then struck two other cars, killing an elderly Topeka couple, Sheldon and Virginia Cohen, and 38-year-old Ricardo Mireles of Topeka.

NEW YORK (AP) — Three months ago, this flu season was shaping up to be short and mild in the U.S. But a surprising second viral wave has made it the longest in 10 years.

This flu season has been officially going for 21 weeks, according to reports collected through last week and released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That makes it among the longest seen since the government started tracking flu season duration more than 20 years ago.

Some experts likened the unusual double waves to having two different flu seasons compressed, back-to-back, into one.

“I don’t remember a season like this,” said Dr. Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan researcher who had been studying respiratory illnesses for more than 50 years.

The previous longest recent flu season was 20 weeks, which occurred in 2014-2015.

Flu can cause a miserable, relatively mild illness in many people and a more severe illness in others. Young children and the elderly are at greatest risk from flu and its complications. Flu vaccinations are recommended annually for all but the very young.

The current season began the week of Thanksgiving, a typical start time. At the beginning, most illnesses were caused by a flu strain that tends not to cause as many hospitalizations and which is more easily controlled by vaccines.

But in mid-February, a nastier strain started causing more illnesses and driving up hospitalizations.

Not helping matters: The harsher bug is not well matched to the vaccine, said the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer, who oversees flu tracking.

Still, this flu season is not nearly as bad as last winter’s 19-week season, the deadliest in at least four decades. An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last season.

The CDC is estimating that flu-related deaths this season in the range of 35,000 to 55,000.

More good news: Brammer said that although the virus is notoriously unpredictable, signs suggest this flu season should be over soon.

“It’s on the verge” of being over, she said. “If nothing changes.”

FARMINGTON, Mo. (AP) — The wife of a Missouri Ku Klux Klan leader has admitted to fatally shooting her husband.

Malissa Ancona pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abandonment of a corpse in the 2017 death of Frank Ancona Jr. She was sentenced to life in prison under a plea deal. Frank Ancona identified himself as an imperial wizard of the KKK.

Malissa Ancona initially reported her husband missing. She later claimed her son, Paul Jinkerson Jr., shot him while he was sleeping and after he had asked for a divorce. He faces the same charges as his mom.

But she said Friday that he had no role in the shooting. She said did help clean up the crime scene in a rural area of southeast Missouri and helped dump the body.

FULTON, Mo. (AP) — Fire officials have determined that a blaze that heavily damaged a central Missouri ambulance district headquarters that was under construction was accidental.

The fire was reported Thursday morning at the Callaway County Ambulance District’s new facility. It took about two hours to bring the blaze under control. The building was unoccupied, and no injuries were reported.

The ambulance district’s director, Charles Anderson, says staff had hoped to move into the facility in October or November. Now, he speculated that the building would need to be torn down and rebuilt.

By JOHN HANNA AP Political Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas officials issued a new fiscal forecast Thursday that’s slightly more optimistic about how much tax revenue the state should expect to collect over the next two years, creating a little more breathing room for expanding Medicaid or providing tax relief.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly immediately urged the Republican-controlled Legislature to be cautious. She vetoed a tax relief billchampioned by GOP leaders earlier this month, and some lawmakers want to try again.

Kelly also is pushing to expand the state’s Medicaid health coveragefor the needy to as many as 150,000 additional people. While the idea has bipartisan support, top Republicans have opposed the idea, arguing that it could prove too costly for the state.

The forecasters increased the official projections for tax revenues by less than 1% for the current budget year, the 2020 budget year that begins in July and the 2021 budget year. But the new numbers reflect a view from that group — legislative researchers, university economists and officials in Kelly’s administration — that the economy should remain solid in the short-term.

“What we’re seeing is true, good, solid growth — business growth, income growth. Those are real,” said Larry Campbell, the governor’s budget director and a member of the forecasting group. “We’re hoping that we’re stabilizing out.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri social services director is resigning to take a job with a faith-based nonprofit.

Gov. Mike Parson on Thursday announced Director Steve Corsi will step down June 3.

In his resignation letter, Corsi wrote that he’s leaving for a job in the nonprofit human services field and is excited to “get back to direct care.”

Parson spokeswoman Kelli Jones says Corsi did not specify the nonprofit, and an Associated Press request for comment to a Department of Social Services spokeswoman was not immediately returned Thursday.

The department oversees food stamps, Medicaid and other services for low-income Missourians. The agency also investigates child abuse.

Former Gov. Eric Greitens named Corsi to lead the agency in 2017. He previously headed the Wyoming Department of Family Services.