KANSAS CITY, KAN. – A Kansas man pleaded guilty Monday to armed bank robbery, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.
Hammeke -photo KDOCSecurity camera image from the bank robbery
Damon Hammeke, 26, Leavenworth, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of armed bank robbery and one count of brandishing a firearm during a robbery. In his plea, he admitted that on Nov. 21, 2017, he robbed the Country Club Bank at 2310 South 4th Street in Leavenworth. He entered the bank wearing a white jacket and black mask and carrying a handgun. He left the bank with money.
Two days later, an officer in Tonganoxie attempted to stop him for a traffic offense. Hammeke fled, leading police on a high-speed chase through Tonganoxie, Basehor, Lansing, Leavenworth, Platte County, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., before they were able to stop him.
Sentencing is set for July 22. He faces a penalty of up to 25 years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000 on the robbery charge as well as not less than seven years and a fine up to $250,000 on the firearm charge.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Court documents say one of three teens charged in suburban Kansas City killing later told someone who resisted his car theft attempt that “the last person who said that lost his life.”
Bibee -photo Johnson Co.
The affidavit released Tuesday in the case against 18-year-old Matthew Lee Bibee Jr. says he tried to steal the car on March 31 in Olathe. The documents say the victim initially said he wouldn’t give Bibee has car. But when Bibee pulled out a gun, the man put up his hands and ran away.
A responding officer shot and wounded Bibee in an exchange of gunfire. The theft attempt happened two days after 17-year-old Rowan Padgett was killed.
Bibee is jailed on $1 million bond on charges that include first-degree murder.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman has paid $310,000 in restitution to a disabled resident who was under her care.
McDonald photo St. Francois County
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a news release that Mary McDonald, 84, of Bismark, paid the restitution and was also placed on five years’ probation Monday as part of a plea deal. She previously pleaded guilty to financial exploitation of a disabled person and a Medicaid recipient.
McDonald owned Chapel Ridge Living Center in Mineral Point, where the victim lived.
Schmitt said the victim received a large sum of money in the spring of 2015, when Chapel Ridge was experiencing financial difficulty. He said McDonald befriended the woman and borrowed $310,000 but did not pay the money back. Schmitt said McDonald paid the restitution when she was sentenced.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — The NAACP is weighing in after at least one student waved a Confederate battle flag while driving through a southwest high school’s parking lot on a day focused on raising awareness about LGBT bullying.
One of the posters Kickapoo High -image courtesy KYTV
Two posters promoting the Day of Silence event also were ripped down at Kickapoo High School in Springfield.
Springfield NAACP president Toni Robinson said in a statement that the group is against “any actions that demean” students and urged school officials to do more to safeguard them.
The high school’s Gay Straight Trans Alliance made posters leading up to the national Day of Silence on April 12. When the first was ripped down, hundreds of students were watching. Some of them laughed and cheered.
A district spokesman says students were disciplined.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas district attorney has declined to charge Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill with a crime in a domestic incident that involved his fiance and their 3-year-old child.
Tyreek Hill -photo courtesy KC Chiefs
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said Wednesday “we believe a crime has occurred, however, the evidence in this case does not conclusively establish who committed this crime.”
Police were called to the home of Hill and Crystal Espinal twice last month, and the investigators said their child had been injured. Howe said there will be “a continued involvement by state officials” but declined to discuss the health of the child.
He described the case as a difficult one because of the child’s involvement.
BARRY COUNTY — One person died in an accident just after 8a.m. Wednesay in Barry County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2015 Kia Optima driven by Susan E. Neeley, 63, Pierce City, was eastbound on Highway 37 two miles south of Monett. The vehicle pulled into the path of a northbound 2012 Chevy Truck driven by Lon W. Cearley, 64, Monett.
Neeley was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to the funeral home in Cassville. Cearley was transported to Cox Monnett Hospital.
Both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the MSHP.
SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities continue investigating after skeletal remains were found Monday in rural Shawnee County.
Authorities on the scene near where skeletal remains were found -photo courtesy WIBW TV
Late Monday, the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office was called to a wooded area north of the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism regional office at 300 SW Wanamaker Road, according to Undersheriff Phil Blume
A citizen found skeletal remains in the dense woods. The Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office, in conjunction with the Coroner’s Office, was able to confirm that the skeletal remains are human, according to Deputy Shayna Anderson.
The excavation process in conjunction with Washburn University Forensic Anthropology Recovery Unit is complete.
A majority of the human remains were able to be recovered. The remains are now in the custody of the Shawnee County Coroner’s Office. A preliminary investigation of the scene did not indicate signs of foul play.
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SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating after skeletal remains were found.
On Monday, the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office was called to a wooded area north of the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism regional office at 300 SW Wanamaker Road, according to Undersheriff Phil Blume
A citizen claimed to have found skeletal remains in the dense woods. The Sheriff’s Office responded and with the assistance of the Shawnee County Coroner’s Office, located and removed the skeletal remains in question. Due to darkness and heavy vegetation the search was postponed until daylight.
The property and immediate area in question is private property and access is being denied, according to Louderback
It is important for a thorough search of the area to be completed. Authorities don’t known how long that will take.
Many farms in China infected with African swine fever are not restocking with pigs. Bloomberg News reports that 80 percent of farms infected with the deadly virus are not restocking, leaving a significant gap in production. China is the world’s largest pork producer, but agriculture officials in China say production has dropped 21 percent since African swine fever was first reported last August and, a new outbreak on an island province was reported over the weekend.
The declining hog production in China will result in lower demand for soybeans and feed products, but an increase in the need for pork products. Officials in China say, “if confidence among breeders fails to recover, it will hurt consumers.” They predict pork supplies could start to tighten and prices may hit record levels in the second half of the year, before tightening further in 2020. Pork accounts for more than 60 percent of meat consumption in China.
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
Two Kansas City area hospitals joined 12 other transplant centers this week in a lawsuit over a new liver allocation policy that they say will result in “hundreds of liver transplant candidates needlessly dying.”
The University of Kansas Hospital and Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed in Atlanta against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, the private organization that contracts with the government to manage the nation’s organ transplant system.
The new policy, set to take effect at the end of April, changes the regional system for allocating livers to one that gives priority to the sickest patients.
That has hospitals such as KU and Saint Luke’s upset because their region has a higher rate of donor registration than others.
Supporters of the policy change say that it’s meant to reduce geographic disparities in organ distribution. The notion is that where a patient lives or chooses to list for a transplant should not be a factor in organ allocation.
More than 13,000 people in the United States are awaiting liver transplants and only 7,000 livers are currently available, according to the lawsuit. Another 11,000 people are added to the liver waitlist every year.
The lawsuit filed Monday contends that the new policy “will result in at least 20% fewer liver transplants being performed in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged regions in the country, which are served in part by Transplant Center Plaintiffs’ liver transplant programs.”
“Based on the government’s own data, Transplant Center Plaintiffs will perform 256 fewer transplants per year — leaving 256 candidates at risk of imminent death absent the transplant they would have otherwise received,” the lawsuit states.
Calling the new policy “the product of an opaque, reckless process that failed to allow for full public comment and transparent discussion,” the plaintiffs say they’re not seeking preferential treatment. Rather, they say they’re asking HHS and UNOS “to develop a policy that complies with the law.”
The lawsuit alleges that HHS unlawfully abdicated its responsibility to determine the nation’s liver allocation policy by deferring decision-making to UNOS.
Ann Paschke, a spokeswoman for UNOS, said in a statement that the organization would review the complaint, but believes “that we have developed a sound policy that provides a fairer, more equitable system for all liver patients – no matter where they live – as they wait for a lifesaving transplant.”
“The reality is that, on average, three people die every day in the U.S. while waiting for a liver transplant, and because this new policy will save more lives by reducing the number of patients who die while waiting, we believe it is an improved policy and a step in the right direction,” Paschke said.
“This new policy is projected to reduce waitlist mortality by roughly 100 fewer deaths each year, will allow more children to receive life-saving transplants, and will correct an inequity that emerged over time within the old policy that led to unfair advantages and disadvantages based on where liver transplant recipients live.”
Besides KU and Saint Luke’s, the plaintiffs include Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, which jointly operate a transplant program in St. Louis that has performed more than 2,100 liver transplants since 1985. Other plaintiffs include hospitals in Atlanta, Detroit, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon, Tennessee and Virginia.
Four individuals awaiting transplants are also plaintiffs.
The transplant centers collectively account for 11% of the people nationwide awaiting liver transplants.
KU Hospital, part of the University of Kansas Health System, runs the only liver transplant program in Kansas and has performed nearly 1,600 transplants since 1990, according to the lawsuit. Saint Luke’s has performed about 70 liver transplants in the last five years.
Liver transplant survival rates have improved markedly since Thomas Starzl performed the first liver transplant at the University of Colorado in the early 1960s. The first patients survived only weeks. Today, 86% are alive one year after surgery, 78% after three years, 72% after five years and 53% after 20 years, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Organ donation registration rates vary dramatically by state. They range from a high in Montana of 93% of adults registered as organ donors to a low in New York of 32%. Missouri ranks seventh in the nation, with 73 percent of adults registered as organ donors. Kansas ranks 12th, with 68 percent registered.
Other elected officials support the change. More than 80 House members sent a letter last month to Azar endorsing it, according to Modern Healthcare.
In an op-ed last week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Blunt said that the new policy could result in a 32% drop in liver transplants in Missouri.
“No longer will locally donated livers be more likely to stay in Missouri or other Midwestern states that have high donation rates,” Blunt wrote. “Instead, the transplantation network rewards locations that don’t have the high number of organ donors that most Midwestern states do.”
The most common reasons for liver transplants are alcoholic liver disease, cancer, fatty liver disease and cirrhosis caused by chronic hepatitis C. The vast majority of donated livers come from people who have recently died.
A statement released by KU said the new policy will result in transporting organs and transplant teams up to 500 miles away from each donor hospital, creating more risks for patients, the organs and the teams as well as higher transportation costs.
“More people will die … that’s the bottom line,” Dr. Sean Kumer, a transplant surgeon, is quoted as saying in the release.
Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.
A study commissioned by the Plant-Based Foods Association says 76 percent of survey respondents are in favor of allowing dairy terms on plant-based items, while those self-described as consumers were 97 percent in favor. The Food and Drug Administration accepted comments on the issue of labeling non-dairy imitators as dairy items recently.
National Milk Producers Federation spokesperson Chris Galen says, however, that the survey shows “that the vegan community was confused about the question being asked by FDA.” Galen says the purpose of the FDA comment period was to assess whether all consumers, “not just those sending back postcards,” understand the nutritional inferiority of the plant-based alternatives, per comments made by former FDA commissioner Scott Gotlieb.
Galen called the comment period “a qualitative review of evidence that there is a lack of understanding that not all products labeled as ‘milk’ have the same nutrition.” The National Milk Producers Federation is confident the data it and other organizations provided will help provide the rationale for the FDA to enforce its standards against labeling plant-based alternatives as dairy products.
Many farms in China infected with African swine fever are not restocking with pigs. Bloomberg News reports that 80 percent of farms infected with the deadly virus are not restocking, leaving a significant gap in production. China is the world’s largest pork producer, but agriculture officials in China say production has dropped 21 percent since African swine fever was first reported last August and, a new outbreak on an island province was reported over the weekend.
