Ellis County Administrator Greg Sund has been eliminated from consideration for the city manager position in Minot, N.D., the Minot Daily News reported Friday.

Sund, who has served as Ellis County’s first administrator since 2010, also is a finalist for the city manager position in Hood River, Ore., a community of approximately 7,000.

He was scheduled to address the community as part of a public hearing this week. Sund has been unavailable for comment.

by KARI BLURTON
Hays Post

Your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you — the huge white balloon trailing boxes and flying high over Hays on Friday morning was, in fact, real.

Sixth-graders from Stockton and Salina’s St. Mary’s Grade School participated in a high-altitude ballooning project with the help of the physics department at Fort Hays State University.

According to FHSU professor of education and physics Dr. Paul Adams, the students were given the task to build a payload — a box with cameras or bottles of liquid attached – that would then be lifted by a helium balloon 85,000 feet into the sky.

Adams said the purpose of the project is not only so students can study pictures of the atmosphere and freezing temperatures, but also to physically apply knowledge learned in the classroom.

“(The project) combines science, it combines engineering, and it’s then carried over to performance,” Adams said. “It’s not just you can tell me about this, but you are going to perform and show me what you can do.”

He added, “And really the fun part is: Who doesn’t want like to launch things 85,000 feet into the air?”

Adams said the project is funded by the Kansas NASA Space Grant and part of NASA’s interest is “developing the next generation career and workforce” in the science and engineering fields.

Stockton junior high math and science teacher Andrea Dix said her students have been working on the project since November, and the project has “tweaked” their interest in science.

“(The balloon launch) gives the students an idea of how they can take the things they learn in the classroom and take off into the real world,” Dix said.

“I think it’s awesome,” added FHSU sophomore Cody Studer who helped with the project as a member of FHSU’s Science and Mathematics Education Institute, “We are sending something up that is going onto the edge of outer space.”

Adams predicted the balloon will travel for about 2.5 hours.

The students have radio devices and will track the balloons for retrieval Friday afternoon.

Salina South High School will launch another balloon and payload Monday from Bickle-Schmidt Sports Complex at 8:30 a.m.

The balloon can be tracked at habhub.org.

Video:

At 5:14 p.m. Feb. 26, the Hays Police Department was dispatched to a reported disturbance at a house in the 2500 block of Pine Street. The caller, the Hays Police Department said Friday in a news release, claimed to be a child inside the house. The caller reported that seven people with guns had entered the residence and struck his father on the head.

Officers responded to the area and set up a perimeter in an effort to contain the threat.

Contact with a resident inside the house was made and it was determined to be a false report. Further investigation showed the call had been “spoofed” and that there was not a home invasion taking place as the call had indicated.

At this time, authorities believe this is an incident of “swatting.”

“Swatting” is a crime where an unknown person calls the police reporting a fake emergency that draws a high level response from law enforcement, including SWAT teams. The individuals who engage in this activity use technology to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone. Sometimes swatting is done for revenge, sometimes as a prank.

Either way, it is a serious crime, and one that has potentially dangerous consequences.

Most people involved in such prank calls are also involved in other criminal activity, such as identity theft and other computer-related crimes. Suspects of swatting could face federal criminal charges and some past cases have resulted in prison terms of 11 years.

This incident is being investigated by the Ellis County High Technology Crime Unit, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• Submitted by Hays Police Chief Don Scheibler