The St. Joseph Police Department honored a Carden Park Elementary School student Friday morning for his quick actions stemming from an incident that took place in November.

Seth Searle was presented with a Letter of Appreciation from St. Joseph Police Chief Chris Connally during an assembly Friday morning.

The department said on Nov. 4, 2015 at approximately 7:50 a.m. Searle was walking to school when he witnessed a disturbance involving a man with a gun in the 1700 block of South 12th St. He immediately went to the school and reported the incident to staff members.

“He witness suspicious activity involving a weapon and he came directly to school and reported the information,” said Lacey Adams Carden Park Principal. “We were proud that he was responsible enough and brave enough to make his way to school quickly and report the information immediately.”

Police said Searle was able to give a detailed description of the suspect, his vehicle and the incident to School Resource Officer Todd Smith. This information helped responding officers find the incident location and the victim. It also helped them identify the suspect.

“Seth’s actions on that day greatly assisted the police department and were key to a successful investigation. Because of his concern for the safety of the public, his fellow students, and his willingness to assist the Police Department Seth is awarded the Chief’s Letter of Appreciation,” Chief Connally said in a post on Facebook.

(Update) Mr Kitchen has been arrested.  Shortly after noon today, the news was posted to the Facebook page of Longmont Fire, Police and OEM: “The suspect was arrested in Alabama at 10:50. The victim is safe.”

Colorado authorities warned that a kidnapping suspect and his 16-year-old victim may be heading to St Joe.

An official with the Longmont Department of Public Safety says a Longmont teenager was abducted and the suspect may be heading to Missouri with her.  A social media post listed three cities in Missouri that might be the kidnapper’s destination: St Joseph, Darlington and Kingston.

Thomas Ludwig Fechtler, 51, is also known as Thomas Kitchen. He was believed to be driving a light green, 2007 Toyota Rav4 with Missouri plate WH9K2U. The vehicle has rear end damage and expired plates dating back to November 2015.

Fechtler is believed to be traveling with the victim, a 16-year-old girl. The victim was described as white, measuring 5-feet, 3-inches tall and weighing 120 pounds. She has blond hair and blue eyes.

Fechtler is wanted on a felony arrest warrant for sexual assault on a child – position of trust, second-degree kidnapping and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

A 19-year-old employee at Clark’s Custom Meat may have lost his hand in an industrial accident Thursday morning.

Colonel Bill Puett of the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department tells us that Bailey Kerns of Agency, Missouri was injured using a meat saw. A deputy went to the facility at 8411 US 59 shortly before 10 a.m.

“The individual’s hand had been injured, it was already wrapped when our officers arrived,” Puett said. “Our officer did apply a tourniquet to assist until E.M.S. arrived.”

Mr Kerns and his hand were transported to Mosaic Life Care and then transferred to see a specialist at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Winter road conditions caused a school bus to roll in Andrew County Thursday morning but caused no injuries.

Sgt. Jake Angle with the Missouri State Highway Patrol said an Andrew County School Bus for the Savannah R3 School District was picking up kids around 6:30 a.m. traveling westbound on county road 63 when it crested a hill and come across some slick road conditions, the bus started sliding sideways the wheels caught and it overturned.  Angle said there were three kids on board at the time but no one was injured.

Parents were notified and picked the children up at the scene.

 

The potential for people to be swindled out of their hard-earned money isn’t going to lessen this year according to the St. Joseph Police Department.

“We will see an increase in it because it’s easy and it’s very easily done and quite frankly it’s very hard to catch,” said Detective Richard Shelton with the St. Joseph Police Department. “There will be an increase in scams and an increase in new scams.”

2015 was a year that also saw an increase in scams.  Shelton talks about some of the big ones in the St. Joseph area.

“We saw several of the ‘Grandma Scams’ in which someone pretends to be a grandson or a granddaughter mostly a grandson and calls their grandmother and the grandmother thinks they’ve been in another country or an accident and that they need money and they need the money wired or sent to them,” Shelton said. “If I call you up and I say with kind-of-a-cutting-out-background and say this is such-n-such and she says ‘Billy is that you?’ Then you become Billy really quick and Billy’s in trouble, Billy’s in jail, Billy had an accident, Billy needs money. Then another caller may say ‘I’m Billy’s attorney and I need money.'”

Also a top one in the area in 2015, Craig’s List scams.

“That’s probably one of our hottest items here,” Shelton said. “People get on Craig’s List and they’re either taken by trying to buy something or they’re trying to sell something and someone wants to send them a check.  They have it on Craig’s List for $200 and someone sends them a check for $1,200 and then they cash the check and they wire the money back to the person of $1,000 and they think they’ve done really well until they find out the check that they cashed was counterfeit and then they owe the place that cashed that check.”

Asphalt and roof coating scams were still an issue last year.

“People are walking around in Spring and Fall and still falling for coating of roofs and coating of asphalt,” Shelton said. “When you have an asphalt driveway put in it’s pretty expensive but when you do it for a few hundred dollars and you think you’re really getting a bargain but you really didn’t get a bargain and you really didn’t get a driveway then you’ve been scammed.”

Then there were the phone and email scams.

“People open emails and they don’t even know who this person is or where they’re coming from,” Shelton said. “There are so many scams that you can deal with it’s hard to figure out which are the top.”

A majority of the scams originate in foreign countries.

“Some of them still believe them especially our seniors. They still believe they’re going to win the big bucks, they’re going to win the lottery, that there’s money out there to be had,” Shelton said. “When we tell them that that money is being used to support war efforts against our nation they still don’t get it.  Most of those scams originate in a country where we do not even have extradition with.  Once they go outside the city limits of St. Joe we can’t go out and arrest them.”

Once someone plays into a scam many times their name gets put on a list.

“I had one gentleman last year who lost over $60,000 in scams with people just mailing things to him and him playing along on the phone,” Shelton said. “Once their name gets out there it’s in all these rooms in these small countries up on a board.  Those people their whole job all day long is to call these numbers and get some sort of scam to get money, and they do it and they’re very successful at it.”

He said the best thing to do is hang-up.

New scams that hit St. Joseph in 2015 was a warrant scam where an individual pretended to be a law enforcement officer calling residents to inform them they have a warrant out for their arrest unless they pay-off a fine.  Another, a utility shut-off scam where the scammer calls businesses and tells them if they didn’t pay a supposedly overdue utility bill the power was going to be shut-off.

Shelton said this year he expects scams to continue to increase and change.

“We will see new scams that we’ve never seen before and somebody will come up with something new and it will work for awhile until we get the broadcast out on it and people get tuned-in and then they’ll create another new one.  So it’s just kind-of an ongoing vicious cycle of new scams,” Shelton said.

The K-JO 105.5 Pound Plunge kicked off another year of dropping the pounds Wednesday at East Hills Shopping Center.

K-JO and Mosaic Life Care are teaming up for the 11th year of the Pound Plunge.  Tracey Clark, Media and Community Relations with Mosaic said it’s a fun way for people to get in shape.

“Adult and childhood obesity was identified by the community as one of the top three health needs they want us to focus on,” Clark said. “The Pound Plunge is a great way for people to start their journey toward better health and weight loss.”

As of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday around 1,400 people were preregistered for the 12-week long weight loss competition.  That number is anticipated to increase another couple of hundred by the close of registration at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

“It takes about 12 weeks to make a new habit and that’s why we have a 12 week free weight-loss program so you can learn new ways to live healthier,” said Cyndee Campbell with K-JO. “Over the past 11 years it’s really neat to see people who come back and have kept off their weight but they still want to lose more.  They’re a real inspiration.”

For the past two years weigh-in has been held at the REC Center but Campbell said that could get a little crowded.

“With the help of East Hills there’s a lot more room, things are streamlined, it’s a lot faster weigh-in process this year,” she said.

However, the REC Center is still offering multiple activities for Pound Plunge participants.

Registration is going on until the end of the kick-off event at 7 p.m. Jan. 6.  Individuals or teams wanting to take part in the 12 week long competition can sign up by CLICKING HERE.

Weekly weigh-ins will be held until the final weigh-in scheduled for Wed., March 30, 2016.

Saying Congress is being held hostage by gun rights groups, President Barack Obama has unveiled a 10-point plan he says will help keep guns from those who shouldn’t have them. One goal is to plug loopholes that allow purchases of firearms at gun shows and online without background checks. The effort is being widely condemned by GOP lawmakers and Republican presidential candidates.

GOP lawmakers from Missouri and Kansas, along with congressional leaders, responded with claims that the president had overstepped his constitutional authority and wanted to erode Second Amendment rights.

As you might expect, Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt objects to the Presidents plans.

“There seem to be no limits to how far this president will go to overstep the Constitutional limits of his power,” Blunt said in a statement. “His latest target is the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”

Blunt says the President should use this opportunity to get to the root cause of many violent incidents and join efforts to improve and expand access to mental health care. Blunt urges the president to reconsider any attempt to roll back Constitutional rights unilaterally.

Obama said on Tuesday that he hoped to add $500 million for the expansion of mental health treatment across the United States.

“For those in Congress who so often rush to blame mental illness for mass shootings as a way of avoiding action on guns, here’s your chance to support these efforts. Put your money where your mouth is,” the president said.

North Missouri Congressman Sam Graves, a Tarkio Republican, criticized the president’s actions in the Congressman’s weekly newsletter.

“Expanding background checks isn’t going to stop radical Islamic terrorism,” Graves said.

“And, as we’ve seen too many times across this country, strengthening gun laws in public spaces only leaves good people vulnerable and unarmed.”

Kansas 2nd District Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins said in a statement Tuesday that the president had used “more unilateral executive actions” to stifle the guarantees of lawful gun owners.

“Growing up in rural Kansas, I understand firsthand that responsibly exercising our Second Amendment rights is an integral part of our history and traditions,” the GOP representative said. “I will continue to fight against any attempts by President Obama to restrict our constitutional rights.”

The truck used to steal an ATM Monday morning was reportedly stolen.

The St. Joseph Police Department is continuing to search for three suspects they said took an ATM from the Casey’s General Store at 2423 N. Woodbine around 2:30 a.m. Monday.

Police released surveillance photos of a maroon colored Ford F-150 pickup later in the day asking for help from the public. Capt. Jeff Wilson said the truck was found to have been stolen from Firestone located at 3805 Frederick Ave. on the day the crime took place.

Andrew County authorities recovered the stolen pick up at I-29 and K Highway around 2 p.m. Monday.

Police are continuing to investigate the case. Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS hotline at (816) 238-TIPS.

Update (12:45 p.m.) – Multiple handguns have been reported stolen after a robbery Monday night at a St. Joseph gun store.

The St. Joseph Police Department responded to St. Joe Guns located at 6701 US-59 highway around 11:43 p.m. Monday.  Capt. Jeff Wilson said the burglary is reported to have take place around 11:30 p.m.

As we previously reported, investigators said they believe the person or persons broke in through a back door.  The owner conducted an inventory to determine what was take.  Capt. Wilson said it was determined that there were multiple handguns stolen as a result but due to investigative security reasons police are not releasing much more information at this time.

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