The St. Joseph Police Department is still investigating after a report of shots fired from vehicles Thursday night in midtown.

Capt. Jeff Wilson said officers responded to the area of 20th and Lafayette around 5:30 to witnesses reporting that individuals in two vehicles possibly exchanged gunfire for a short period of time in the area.

Shell casings were recovered. No injuries were reported.

Capt. Wilson said an officer located one of the vehicles believed to be involved in the incident in the 600 block of S. 16th St.

Police seized the yellow mustang for investigation. Officers are also searching for a green SUV also believed to be involved in the case but have a limited description to go on.

Wilson said police are still working leads in the case. Anyone with information is asked to call the Tips Hotline (816) 238-TIPS

The St. Joseph Police Department is investigating after break-ins overnight at Bode Middle School and the Aquatic Park.

Officer Mike Hardin with the St. Joseph Police Department said locks were broken at both locations overnight in an effort to gain entry.

The number of suspects is currently unknown, but Hardin said Bode Middle School located at 720 Noyes Blvd. was broken into for a burglary attempt sometime between midnight and 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.

“They broke into the outside concession area of the Bode soccer field,” Hardin said.

It’s unknown if the Bode incident is tied to a burglary attempt at the Aquatic Park located just down the road at 402 S. Noyes which also took place sometime overnight.

Hardin said both the office and concession area of the pool were broken into.  Locks were broken, a screen cut, and metal covering a window was cut.

He said currently nothing is believed missing from either location.  Also, nothing appeared to have been vandalized.

Police are looking into the possibility of surveillance footage and the investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS hotline at (816) 238-TIPS.

Rosecrans Memorial Airport celebrated the completion of its new runway Friday morning with a ribbon cutting.

The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the reconstruction of the 4,797 foot by 75 foot assault strip runway.

“Construction took approximately four months.  We went a little bit longer due to weather and due to unforeseen circumstances we had an emergency on our main runway where concrete blew out,” said Abe Forney, Rosecrans Memorial Airport manager.

He said the runway had to be redone because it had started to deteriorate.

“When that happens in concrete it starts to become brittle and when concrete on the runway becomes brittle it causes little pieces of concrete to damage engines and propeller which we call sod.  As that concrete starts to deteriorate it becomes more dangerous for aircraft to take off and land,” Forney said. “We had to completely tear it out and replace it.”

The cost of the structure was around $5.8 million.

“That was funded through 65-percent guard and the remaining 35-percent was funded through a grant from the FAA and local capital improvement funds paid for 10-percent of that 35-percent,” Forney said.

The runway serves general aviation and the Missouri Air National Guard’s 139th Airlift Wing.

“This is big enough to land large aircraft and the C-130s use it for their assault training,” Forney said. “It’s very important for the 139th’s mission to get these assault landings in and train on that runway and for civilian use it’s very important because aircraft take off and land in the direction of the wind so if the wind is out of the east or out of the west the main runway which is north and south is a lot hard for them to utilize.”

A St. Joseph man has been charged after an inmate in the Buchanan County jail alleged she was inappropriately touched.

Carlos Marte, 40 is charged in Buchanan County with a felony of sexual contact with a prisoner.  The charge carries a range of punishment of a maximum of one year in county jail or two to four years in the department of corrections.

According to court documents, on May 27th around 6 p.m. an inmate in the Buchanan County jail said Marte touched her genitals under the guise of conducting a physical examination.

“The defendant is an employee of Advanced Correctional Healthcare with whom Buchanan County contracts to provide medical care for inmates under their custody,” said Thomas Cates with the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department. “The procedure during which the defendant touched the genitals of the victim, according to policies of the medical provider and statements taken from representatives of the provider, is not the type procedure during which any physical contact is require or should take place.”

The felony complaint alleges the defendant was assigned to work in the jail and knowingly had deviate sexual intercourse with an inmate of the jail by touching her with his hand.

As we previously reported, the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office said as soon as a complaint was submitted it began investigating.  The department said it submitted two cases for consideration of charges Tuesday.

Bail for Marte is set at $10,000 cash.  An arraignment had not been set as of 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Crime statistics in St. Joseph were up last year and that trend is continuing according to the city’s Chief of Police.

In an interview with 680 KFEQ Wednesday morning, St. Joseph Chief of Police Chris Conally said crime has increased around 6 percent.

Since January, the St. Joseph Police Department has responded to five homicide investigations with six victims.  As we previously reported, officers responded Sunday to a double-homicide investigation on Safari Dr.  Since then, five people have been charged in connection with that case.

“We know when something like this happens it instills a lot of fear in our community.  One of the things that we can guarantee is that when something like this comes up we put every resource into it that we have and we continue to fight this type of crime with any resource available, all resources,” Connally said. “This is a situation that involved career criminals.  The victims were in that neighborhood visiting somebody and had left when this occurred.”

Connally said crime is up all over the nation not just in St. Joseph.

“In my opinion there is a crime wave going across the country and unfortunately the large increases we’ve seen in a lot of the municipal areas, unfortunately we’re not immune to that,” he said.

But some areas of crime are down.

“Burglaries have been down a little bit in recent months, larcenies have been down a little bit in recent months,” Connally said. “If you’re a victim of a crime whether it’s up or down that doesn’t matter very much the fact of the matter is you’re a victim.”

Crime in 2015 was also up.

“Last year we saw over 300 more assaults then the year before, we’ve continued to see that rise,” Connally said. “We saw a significant rise mostly over the last six months of last year and that’s continued on into this year.  Actually June was the most normalized aside from two homicides which is very unfortunate; the other statistics were the most normalized then we’ve seen in the last 12 months.”

He said many of the increases have been with disputes, and domestic related calls and police are also seeing an increase in mental health issues.