COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Columbia police have identified a man who was found dead last month inside a Chinese restaurant in Columbia.

Police said Wednesday that 53-year-old Nam Hoang Le’s body was found Feb. 18 inside the ABC Chinese Cuisine restaurant.

Investigators determined Le apparently was trying to burglarize the restaurant while it was closed.

The Columbia Missourian reports the restaurant’s owner, Mingsun Wong, found the body near the business’ kitchen. He noticed holes in the ceiling and originally reported a structural collapse before finding Le’s body.

Le was a foreign national from Vietnam with a conviction for burglary in St. Louis in 2012.

TROY, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say a Missouri woman who is charged with fatally shooting her boyfriend reported that he had assaulted her.

49-year-old Angela Medici is jailed on $300,000 bond on first-degree murder and armed criminal action charges in the death of 63-year-old Keith Sweetin. Deputies responded around 3 a.m. Monday to the couple’s home east of Troy and found him dead.

A witness called 911 to report Sweeting assaulting Medici; the witness then reported seeing Medici shoot Sweetin in the head.

Charging documents say Medici told investigators she was “angry” with Sweetin and “that she could have and should have left the residence, however chose not to.” She said he had assaulted her earlier that morning. No attorney is listed for her in online court records.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The conservatives who dominate the Kansas Legislature voted Wednesday to tell New York’s leaders just how much they hate the Empire State’s new law expanding abortion rights, ignoring Democrats who called the endeavor a toothless waste of time and money.

The Kansas House voted 85-38 on Wednesday to approve the resolution, which declares that the New York lawoffends Kansas’ and the nation’s values and incites “abuse and violence toward women and their unborn children.” The state Senate approved the measure on a 27-13 vote on Valentine’s Day.

The votes reflect long-standing Republican and anti-abortion majorities that have given Kansas some of the nation’s toughest abortion restrictions.

“We need to stand as a group and stand up for the unborn babies in every state and nation,” state Rep. Barbara Wasinger, a western Kansas Republican, said after likening abortion to the Holocaust.

GOP leadership may be content to waste time and tax dollars on this meaningless debate, but I am not. Therefore, I will be returning my pay for today to the state. #ksleg #scr1606 pic.twitter.com/aGFRPEtqE2

— Brett Parker (@BrettParker4KS) March 12, 2019

Some Kansas Democrats said their colleagues should focus on their own state’s business. State Rep. Brett Parker, a Kansas City-area Democrat, rejected his legislative salary of $88.66 for Tuesday, when the House debated the resolution at length, tweeting a photo of a check to the state with “Wasted Day” in the memo line.

States, including Kansas, regularly send resolutions to Congress decrying federal policies or urging action, only to see them largely ignored. But criticism of other states is less common.

Criticism of other states’ laws sometimes spills over into formal action. A handful of liberal states have restricted travel by government employees to states with laws viewed as discriminatory against LGBTQ individuals. Kansas is on a list of nine states targeted by California.

Kansas’ resolution does not threaten any action against New York. It is also non-binding and would go to New Yorkers without going to Kansas’ Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, who supports abortion rights and was born in New York City.

The New York law permits women to end their pregnancies after 24 weeks for health reasons, when the state’s previous law said a woman’s life had to be at risk. Abortion rights opponents say the new law would allow abortions up to the moment of birth.

Brittany Jones, advocacy director for the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas, called the New York law “horrific,” adding, “Kansas is proud to be a state that cherishes life.”

The New York law was designed to codify protections for abortion rights granted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and other court rulings. Abortion-rights backers fear a more conservative high court might strike down Roe.

Even if the Kansas resolution has no teeth, supporters of New York’s law are concerned about what they believe is a misinformation campaign targeting it.

“Opponents of reproductive freedom have been very creative in spreading misinformation and falsehoods,” said New York state Sen. Liz Krueger, the Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the measure. “But it’s no secret what their true intention is — to ban abortion completely and control women’s bodies.”

During the Kansas House debate Tuesday, Rep. Elizabeth Bishop, a Wichita Democrat, disclosed that she had a second-trimester abortion between the births of two healthy sons. She said severe cramping and heavy bleeding sent her to the hospital and a doctor told her she would bleed to death otherwise.

“Wasting time condemning another state was an absurd way to spend taxpayer dollars,” Bishop said Wednesday after the vote.

Democrats who opposed the resolution also showed their displeasure by proposing unsuccessful amendments Tuesday to rewrite it.

One amendment condemned “any politician who has had an affair with an adult film star and then paid money to keep the affair a secret,” a reference to allegations against President Donald Trump. Another condemned “any politician who searches outside the borders of this state to find problems.”

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LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A man has been convicted of killing his girlfriend’s mother’s boyfriend near a northeast Kansas lake.

Jurors in Jefferson County found 23-year-old Jonathan Davis Blevins, of Topeka, guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old Taylor Dean Sawyer. His body was found March 14, 2018, at Perry Lake. Sentencing for Blevins is set for April 18.

His girlfriend, Ashlyn Hemmerling, will be arraigned later this month on a charge of first-degree murder. Her mother, Sarah Hemmerling, initially was charged with obstruction, but that charge was dropped.

Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Herrig said previously that authorities believe Ashlyn Hemmerling helped orchestrate the homicide. He said circumstances leading to the homicide may have involved a domestic dispute as well as drug use.

HEAVENER, Okla. (AP) — Authorities are searching for a Missouri fugitive who is accused of stealing a police car in Oklahoma as authorities attempted to recapture him.

Heavener, Oklahoma, Police Chief Ty Armstrong says police found 30-year old Travis Lee Davis at a convenience store Wednesday after a woman called to report that she was the victim of a kidnapping and that her captor was sleeping in a parked car.

Officers captured Davis after a short foot chase and put him in the back of the running patrol car with his hands cuffed behind his back. While officers stood near the vehicle interviewing the woman, Davis was able to crawl through a window that separates officers from suspects and take off.

Davis drove the car about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) before crashing into a tree in Howe. Armstrong said it’s possible that Davis then may have gotten onto one of two trains that approached the area at the time.

Davis was reported missing from his cell block late Sunday night in a jail in central Missouri’s Pettis County, where he had been held since a hostage situation last month involving a woman and a toddler. He had been charged with kidnapping, child endangerment, domestic assault, resisting arrest and parole violation.

Armstrong said authorities also are searching the towns of Heavener and Howe. Armstrong asked the public to keep doors locked.

The sheriff said Davis has several tattoos, including an eye inside a triangle on the front of his neck.

Police don’t yet know how Davis opened the window of the patrol car. It was completely closed, and should only be possible to open the window from the officers’ side. Police also don’t yet know how Davis was able to drive so far without the key fob, which was with officers, not in the vehicle. None of the weapons inside the police car were missing.

JACKSON COUNTY– A former EMT in Jackson County, Kan., was sentenced Tuesday to five years on federal probation for stealing morphine from vials, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

One condition of his release is he not engage in any occupation that would give him access to controlled substances without prior approval from his probation officer. He also must complete an approved substance abuse program.

Colby W. VanWagoner, 33, Mayetta, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining a controlled substance by deception and one count of making a false statement during an investigation.

The crimes took place while VanWagoner was working for the Jackson County Emergency Medical Service in Holton, Kan. In his plea, VanWagoner admitted he tampered with vials of morphine sulfate. He replaced morphine with saline solution and put the vials back into narcotic boxes on ambulances and in office stocks. Tests showed the concentration of morphine in vials that had been tampered with was low as 1 percent or less. The concentration of morphine should have been 100 percent.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A fired Missouri middle school teacher has been sentenced to eight years and a month in federal prison for a child pornography charge.

26-year-old Brandon Hileman was sentenced Wednesday after entering a guilty plea. Federal prosecutors say Hileman was a new math teacher at Joel E. Barber Junior High School in Lebanon in September 2017 when authorities searched his home and found more than 100 videos depicting child porn.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nhan Nguyen sought a longer, 10-year sentence, noting that Hileman also was a youth leader at a church and developed a concerning relationship with a teenage girl. Nguyen said Hileman eventually obtained a video of the girl using the restroom, but there was no evidence of inappropriate touching.

HILLSBORO, Mo. (AP) — Health officials in mid-Missouri are searching for people who may have had contact with a person who has measles.

The state health department said in a news release that the person from Jefferson County caught the measles virus while traveling out of state. The announcement did not say where the person traveled.

The department said it is working with the person to identify potential contacts and to arrange follow up immunizations if necessary.

Measles cases are on the rise nationwide as more parents choose to not vaccinate their children.

State law requires immunizations against measles for children attending public, private, parochial or parish schools unless they have a medical or religious exemption.

The state health department didn’t specify if the person in Jefferson County was vaccinated.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Jefferson City police say a top aide to a Missouri state senator was arrested after his loaded gun fell to the ground during a bar fight.

Cole County officials say 45-year-old Jared Brown, of Malden, was booked into jail after the fight early Thursday at a downtown Jefferson City bar. Brown works for Sen. Justin Brown, a Republican representing Phelps County.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on the same night, two Missouri House members were involved in an incident at a different bar that left one of them with a black eye.

The events occurred hours after a House committee heard debate on legislation that would allow concealed weapons in public places that currently ban guns.

A message left Wednesday with Brown’s office in Jefferson City was not immediately returned.

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