OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A farmer is recovering after cutting off his own leg with a pocket knife to save himself from a piece of farm equipment he had become caught in.
Photo courtesy Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital
Kurt Kaser, 63, Pender, Nebraska, was unloading corn last month when he got out of his truck and accidentally stepped on the grain hopper opening. An auger in the hopper caught Kaser’s leg, pulling it in and mangling it.
Kaser said he couldn’t pull his leg out and didn’t have his cellphone. There was no one around to help.
So, he took his pocket knife out and sawed off his leg below the knee.
After he was freed, he crawled 150 feet to the nearest phone and was flown to a hospital. Kaser says he never lost consciousness.
On Friday, Kaser was released from a rehabilitation center. He will have to wait for the amputated leg to fully heal before getting a prosthetic leg.
FRANKLIN COUNTY — Three people died in an accident just before 8a.m. Tuesday in Franklin County.
First responders on the scene of Tuesday’s fatal Franklin County crash -photo courtesy Fox4KansasCity
A passenger vehicle driven by Brieyori McGowan, 25, was northbound on Interstate 35 four miles north of the Williamsburg exit, according to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department.
The vehicle traveled off the right side of the road and the driver overcorrected. The vehicle crossed through the median and entered the southbound lanes. A southbound vehicle struck the northbound vehicle.
McGowan and her two children, Kamarria Williams, 7, and Nahajza Jackson, 6, of Texas were pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
The driver of the southbound vehicle was transported to an area hospital. The sheriff’s department did not release the driver’s name or additional details early Wednesday.
This was the second fatality crash in Franklin County Tuesday. Just after 5:30a.m., a pickup driven by John Brian Yaple, 47, Harrisonville, Missouri, when he drove into a tractor-trailer that jackknifed after hitting a deer, according to the KHP.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Six southern Missouri residents are among 15 defendants indicted by a federal grand jury for their roles in a large-scale methamphetamine conspiracy that involved multi-pound shipments of methamphetamine transported from Arizona to Missouri.
Amanda Robinson is being held in Greene Co.
Gregory L. Hopper, 34, and Amanda L. Robinson, 27, both of Springfield, Mo.; Leslie T. Ray, 49, and Melissa D. Melencamp, 42, both of Branson, Mo.; Olivia L. Fluke, 34, of Reeds Spring, Mo.; Jason C. Brookshire, 37, of Aurora, Mo.; Manual Edgardo Cortez, also known as “Manny,” 44, Mel Chevez Arnold, 57, Estelle E. Lawson, 50, and George G. Galaz, Jr., 45, all of Tuscon, Ariz.; Christopher K. Perez, also known as “Wombat,” 31, of Silver City, N.M.; Jedediah L. Selke, 44, of Silver City, N.M.; Diandre Valentine, 32, of Chicago, Ill.; Daniel D. Rhea, 32, of Naples, Texas; Joshua S. Speakes, 39, of Mountain Home, Ark.; were charged in a 12-count superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Springfield, Mo., on Thursday, May 9. This superseding indictment replaces a March 26, 2019, indictment that charged only Cortez and Arnold.
The federal indictment alleges that all 15 defendants participated in a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in Greene, Christian, Polk, and Taney counties from June 2017 to March 18, 2019.
According to an affidavit filed in support of the original criminal complaint, the investigation began when law enforcement officers seized nearly two pounds of methamphetamine, allegedly supplied by Cortez, from a Branson hotel room. Cortez allegedly used couriers to transport multi-pound loads of methamphetamine from Arizona to Branson. On several of those trips, says the affidavit, couriers transported 15-pound loads of methamphetamine.
On Feb. 20, 2019, Arizona state troopers seized approximately eight pounds of methamphetamine from Arnold during a traffic stop near Phoenix, the affidavit says. The methamphetamine allegedly was supplied by Cortez and destined for Springfield.
In addition to the drug-trafficking conspiracy, Hopper, Robinson, Ray, Melencamp, Fluke, Valentine, Rhea, and Galaz are charged in individual counts related to the distribution of methamphetamine.
Hopper and Robinson are also charged together in one count of possessing firearms in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. They allegedly possessed 15 firearms – including four assault rifles, 10 handguns and a shotgun – on Feb. 21, 2019.
Speakes is also charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime and with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wilnelia Cruz-Ulloa spent the last months of her life in a New York City hospital, waiting for a donated liver that never came. Doctors had urged the 38-year-old to move to another state that has more organs to go around. But she couldn’t afford to.
Physicians at the University of Kansas Hospital perform surgery. KU is one of 14 transplant centers challenging a new policy on liver allocation. THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM
Where you live makes a difference in how sick you have to be to get a transplant, or if you’ll die waiting. Now the nation’s transplant system is aiming to make the wait for livers, and eventually all organs, less dependent on your ZIP code. New rules mandating wider sharing of donated livers went into effect Tuesday despite a fierce and ongoing hospital turf war in federal court.
“Whoever’s sickest should have the greatest opportunity” for an organ, said Dr. Sander Florman, a transplant surgeon at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center who helped care for Cruz-Ulloa and pushed for the change. “This woman would be alive if the new rules were in place, or if she’d lived somewhere else.”
But more than a dozen hospitals in parts of the Midwest and South sued to block the change, arguing it will endanger their patients, especially in rural areas, if livers must be shipped further to areas with fewer donations. Late Monday, a judge in Atlanta denied their request to put the rules on hold until the legal challenge is decided. The next day, those hospitals appealed, still seeking to halt the rules after they began.
At a hearing last week, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg made clear the debate weighs heavily: “Transplant issues have this life-and-death and emotional dimension that carries over to everyone who is involved.”
More than 13,000 people are awaiting a new liver, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the nation’s transplant system. Just 8,250 got transplants last year, the vast majority from deceased donors. On average, three people die every day waiting.
That’s just livers. Overall, UNOS’ registry shows nearly 114,000 people are waiting for an organ transplant.
WHY DOES GEOGRAPHY MATTER?
Some parts of the country, especially the Midwest, have more donated organs than other areas, such as New York and California, where the organ shortage is most severe.
And for decades, transplant policy has been “local first” — meaning organs typically are offered first to the sickest patients in the same general area as the donation, even if someone sicker outside the local boundary is a good match. The nation’s 11 transplant regions are subdivided into local areas with individual waiting lists, with wide variations in organ availability both within and between regions.
Some patients seek shorter waiting lists far from home, like the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who lived in California but in 2009 received a liver transplant in Tennessee, which at the time had one of the shortest waits.
For New York’s Cruz-Ulloa, a dental assistant on Medicaid, that wasn’t a choice. After a years-long wait, she died in October.
“They told us, ‘In Florida you could get the liver faster,'” recalled Wendy Gomez, Cruz-Ulloa’s wife. “I’m like, ‘But how are we going to move to Florida and leave everything behind?'”
THE CHANGE
Cruz-Ulloa was part of a lawsuit filed last summer that argued liver distribution maps violate federal law. For example, a liver could be shipped nearly 400 miles from Englewood, New Jersey, to Pittsburgh before it’s offered to nearby New York City. The government told UNOS to find a solution.
The new policy: Patients near death within 500 nautical miles (575 miles) from a donor hospital will be offered a liver first. If there are no takers, it will be offered next to progressively less sick patients at different distances within that circle. Like today, doctors will use a score based on medical tests that predicts patients’ risk of death over the next few months to rank those waiting.
UNOS predicts broader liver sharing will save more than 100 lives as year as people with the worst scores get a shot at transplant ahead of those whose scores suggest they can wait a little longer.
Similar sharing of lung transplants began last year; changes for other organs are in the works.
SOME HOSPITALS FIGHT BACK
Hospitals that countersued say the new policy is unfair, too. They point to people in more rural regions who already face inequities such as less access to health care that leave them at greater risk of death from a variety of diseases.
If all organ banks recruited as many donors as the Midwest, there’d be 1,000 more liver transplants a year, said Dr. Sean Kumer of the University of Kansas Hospital, one of the plaintiffs. “We’ve been successful in doing this, and now people are coming to our area of the country to take organs.”
Costs will rise as transplant teams travel farther to procure organs, added a recent report from Washington University in St. Louis that examined the first months of broader lung distribution. Specialists cited one time when a team from St. Louis and another from Chicago were flying to each other’s city at about the same time to retrieve lungs for similarly sick recipients.
UNOS pledged Tuesday to evaluate if the new liver rules have the intended effect, acknowledging “this has been a challenging time” of strife between transplant centers.
The bigger issue: “I don’t think we can solve the fairness problem until the supply of organs exceeds the demand,” Kevin O’Connor, president of LifeCenter Northwest, an organ procurement organization, who also heads a UNOS geography committee, cautioned before the latest court fight.
LEAVENWORTH COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a hit and run incident that injured a police officer.
photos courtesy Bonner Springs PD
Just before 3p.m. Tuesday, a Bonner Springs Police Officer attempted to conduct a traffic stop on a black sport bike (2008 or newer Honda CBR1000rr, red/black wheels and accents, stickers on side of bearing) for a traffic violation, according to a media release.
The motorcycle took a turn too fast and drove down into an embankment. The officer exited his patrol vehicle in an attempt to contact the driver and the driver drove directly at the officer and intentionally struck the officer causing injury to the officer.
The white male driver then fled northbound onto Kansas 7 Highway into Leavenworth County and pursuing officers lost sight.
If you can identify this motorcycle or driver, please contact Detective Haney chaney@bonnersprings.org
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers on Tuesday passed a package of new business tax breaks and scholarships backed by Gov. Mike Parson after a group of fellow Republicans opposed to parts of the bill ended a more than 27-hour filibuster in the Senate.
At issue was legislation passed last week by the House that would allow General Motors to receive up to $50 million in tax credits over 10 years if it invests $750 million to expand a Wentzville plant that makes trucks and vans.
The GM incentives were wrapped into legislation that also creates a new scholarship for adults to finish their college degrees and gives the Department of Economic Development discretion to provide upfront tax breaks to other businesses before they complete their planned expansions or hire additional employees.
“Today’s final vote is a complete victory for Missourians and jobs in every corner of the state,” Parson said in a statement. “We are sending a powerful message to the nation that we are ready to compete with every state for more jobs.”
Opponents have denounced the upfront tax breaks as a “slush fund” that would be ripe for corruption and also criticized the new scholarship, which could only be offered to people going into fields designated by state higher education officials.
Members of the Senate’s Conservative Caucus began filibustering around 2:30 p.m. Monday, carried on through the night and pushed past the 24-hour mark Tuesday, defying their own Republican leadership and thwarting one of the governor’s top priorities during the final week of work in the annual legislative session.
They finally stopped stalling in hopes of allowing a sweeping abortion bill to pass before lawmakers’ Friday deadline.
“Our desire to protect innocent human life was leveraged against us,” said GOP state Sen. Bob Onder, who was among those filibustering even though his St. Charles County district includes the GM plant.
Parson said Missouri needs a flexible deal-closing option to compete with similar incentives already offered by neighboring states. He said Missouri recently lost a bid to bring a gun manufacturing company to Kansas City because of a deal-closing fund in Arkansas.
Others in the Senate’s Conservative Caucus had also expressed opposition to a provision that would authorize what Parson has called the “Fast Track” scholarship program. The full-tuition scholarships would be available for up to four semesters to people ages 25 or older who earn less than $40,000 annually for individuals or $80,000 for married couples. The budget passed last week by lawmakers includes $10 million for the new program.
Both the closing fund and scholarship were part of Parson’s agenda outlined earlier this year, before the opportunity arose for an expansion at the General Motors facility. The plant employs about 4,250 people in three shifts to make the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon mid-size trucks and the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana full-size vans, according to GM’s website.
The House on Monday passed a new version without those provisions, but Parson and Senate leaders preferred the original bill. The alternative House version would have required GM to retain 90% of the current jobs at the plant in order to qualify for the new tax breaks.
Republican Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz told The Kansas City Star that “folks from GM have made it very clear that there is some poison pills in there.” He said one of those objectionable measures was the requirement to retain 90% of the jobs.
Parson said he wants to let the job-retention threshold be decided by negotiations involving the Department of Economic Development.
Department Director Rob Dixon said businesses that receive job-retention incentives are required, on average, to keep 88 percent of their workforce.
He said GM also has concerns about provisions in the alternative House version that would prohibit the company from simultaneously using other economic development incentives and require it to complete its capital investment within a two-year period to qualify for the tax credits.
General Motors spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan declined to comment about specific parts of the Missouri legislation, but she said in an email that GM supports “the Governor’s efforts to encourage investment and economic growth in Missouri.”
Ginivan said GM has not decided whether to choose Wentzville for an expansion.
“There are several factors that go into making these decisions, including the overall business case for a project, discussions with state and local community officials and discussions with the UAW” union that represents employees, she said.
Just before 7p.m., police responded to a report of an injury accident at the intersection of SW 4th and Taylor in Topeka, according to Lt. John Trimble.
At the scene, it was discovered that a vehicle struck a boy on a bicycle.
The child was transported to a local hospital with what was determined to be life threatening injuries. The driver of the vehicle was not injured.
Members of the TPD Accident Reconstruction Team responded to the scene investigating the incident. Police have not released the names of those involved or the boy’s age.
Tiny anemometer propellers turned in a gentle indoor breeze Tuesday while curious humans milled about several peculiarly outfitted vehicles.
Just outside of a big hangar at Salina Regional Airport, folks in blue jumpsuits stood watch on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Lockheed WP-3 Orion, a large plane loaded with radars and other weather gear.
This was the calm that some 50 scientists, weather experts and students are not here to experience during the early stages of a two-year operation known as Project TORUS. The acronym stands for Targeted Observations by Radars and UAS of Supercells.
The TORUS goal from now through June 16, is to simply learn more, said Adam Houston, lead project investigator from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
“We hope to improve weather forecasting and improve our fundamental understanding (of storms),” he said.
Relating the “observable” with the “unobservable” with cutting-edge instrumentation, Houston said, TORUS aims to research the relationships between severe thunderstorms and tornado formation, according to information provided at the Tuesday legislative briefing, media day, and open house.
“To do that, we really do need to get close to the storms,” Houston said.
Using the WP-3 from high elevations, gathering information from ground level, and for the first time utilizing drones at elevations below 2,500 feet, team members can attack supercells from more angles.
“We can drive up to the storm, and into the storm if necessary,” Houston said, “to get unique observations, but also coordinated observations to see how these relate to each other.” The operation will continue in 2020.
What the average person knows about these immense, dangerous, and sometimes deadly storms, might be thanks only to Hollywood, according to some during opening remarks.
Anthony Bruna, assistant legal counsel for U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, admitted his education came from the 1996 film, Twister.
“You guys are the real deal,” Bruna said to the Project TORUS crew after Tim Rogers, executive director of the Salina Airport Authority, spoke during the legislative briefing.
“Right now, we think of you as a bunch of crazy people who fly into storms, releasing sensors that resemble beer cans,” said Perry Wiggins, executive director of the Governor’s Military Council.
But he assured spectators that those associated with Project TORUS are dedicated professionals.
“I walked around and talked to to them. They have enough information to make your head explode,” Wiggins said. “It’s reassuring to know that we’ve got people like that on point to protect us, giving us time to basically get out of the elements.”
He resides in Chapman, in a house that was damaged by the 2008 tornado that ravaged the small eastern Dickinson county town, killing one and injuring many.
Wiggins wonders why people chase tornadoes.
“They wouldn’t drive toward gunfire, and sometimes these things are more dangerous than that,” he said.
Love of the weather excites Justin Kibbey, commander of the WP-3. His focus is completing missions.
“My main priority is us, to keep the plane safe and get the information to the scientists,” he said. “There’s a lot of expertise here, a lot of knowledge.”
Project TORUS “is going to be fabulous,” said Lisa Teachman KSN TV’s chief meteorologist in Wichita. She broadcast the weather forecast Tuesday at 5 and 6 p.m. from the airport.
Currently, she said, the lead time for an approaching tornado or severe storm is 13 to 14 minutes, and three out of four severe storms are not going to produce a tornado. Teachman aims to glean information from researchers that would add time and accuracy.
“This is like one of the real amazing scientific projects going on,” said Mark Robinson. He and Jaclyn Whittal, both storm chasers, co-host a television show, “Storm Hunters” on The Weather Network, out of Toronto in southern Ontario, Canada.
They filmed interviews Tuesday, and plan on spending two weeks in Salina.
“What I want to learn is why one storm produces a tornado, and the other doesn’t,” Robinson said.
Displays in and out of the hangar Tuesday fascinated David Kraemer, professor of mathematics and computer studies at Kansas Wesleyan University, considering all of the coordination between government resources and universities.
UNL, the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma, NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., Texas Tech and Colorado University in Boulder, are involved. A small group of students from University of Michigan are on the Texas Tech team.
Moms and kids marvel at stickers on the WP-3 aircraft Tuesday during the Project TORUS open house at Salina Regional Airport. The flag stickers show where the airplane has visited and red stickers commemorate weather events where research was done. Photos courtesy Salina Airport Authority
“To make it all work right is quite amazing. It’s a really good experience for these young kids,” Kraemer said. “All of these vehicles taking so many measurements together is really wild. I don’t covet anybody’s job on that plane.”
It’s what James McFadden lives for. He has flown in and out of hurricanes 578 times in his long career, and owns the Guinness World Record for being the oldest to fly through one.
“I love to fly and I love meteorology,” said McFadden, 85. “It’s why I got a PhD in meteorology. My peers were stuck in the lab. I get to see everything unfold right in front of me.”
The big plane is also known as a NOAA WP-3 Hurricane Hunter, that will chase storms in the nation’s belly.
It will work in concert with drones at lower elevations and vehicles collecting data from ground level.
This is the first time that unmanned aerial vehicles will be used for the research.
“It’s a cheaper solution and you don’t have to risk people’s lives by sending them into the storm,” said Anders Olsen, a sophomore at the University of Colorado.
He enjoys to be “part of such an awesome group,” while still in college.
Drones will normally perform one flight for each storm, said Eric Frew, professor of aerospace engineering science at CU-Boulder.
He’s not yet concerned that wind gusts would cause problems for the unmanned aircraft.
“We’ve been in high winds before, and have not seen this happen,” Frew said.
The project will cover 367,000 square miles from North Dakota to Texas and Iowa to Wyoming and Colorado.
Monica and Avery Hoy thoroughly enjoyed their Tuesday tour. They were part of a group of home-schooled students from Hutchinson.
“The airplane is very neat, with all the hurricanes it’s flown through, and the equipment inside” said Monica, 11, who is considering a career in meteorology.
“It’s definitely a strong option,” she said. “Storms are very interesting and exciting.”
Avery, 9, was partial to the ground vehicles inside the hangar.
“I kinda like that weather vein over there,” he said. “It has a big camera on the front.”
Project TORUS has numerous partners with $2.4 million from the National Science Foundation and funding support from NOAA. The TORUS project is led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Partner institutions include: NOAA NSSL, NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, Texas Tech University, and the University of Colorado Boulder.
The above story was republished with permission from the Salina Airport Authority.
LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City man has been charged with fatally shooting another man, dismembering his body and then setting the remains on fire.
Colton Stock photo Clay County
Thirty-year-old Colton Stock was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and three other felonies in the death of 35-year-old Matthew Calkins, of Gardner, Kansas.
No attorney is listed for him in online court records. Bond is set at $1 million cash only.
Police arrested him May 5 while responding to report of gunfire at a home where Calkins’ remains were found. An autopsy determined that Calkins was shot twice before his body was dismembered and burned.
Charging documents say Stock told officers that the shooting happened during a “fight for my life.” Stock previously was charged with assaulting and shooting at another man at the home.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Republican proposal to change a new constitutional amendment on redistricting has stalled in a Senate committee after not enough Republicans showed up to support it.
Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee Chairman Mike Cunningham said Tuesday that the proposal failed on a 2-2 vote a day earlier when Democrats and Republicans deadlocked. Three other Republican committee members were not present for the vote.
The measure which previously passed the House would ask Missouri voters whether to reverse key parts of the 2018 “Clean Missouri” amendment. That amendment directs a state demographer to draw state House and Senate districts after the 2020 census with “partisan fairness” and “competitiveness” among the top criteria.
The new proposal would vest greater redistricting powers with a bipartisan commission, which handled redistricting after the 2010 census.
By TIM UNRUH
