HUTCHINSON — A Kansas man convicted on charges associated with a September high-speed chase in Reno County was sentenced to two years, two months in jail on Monday
Victor Gutierrez, 26, Dodge City, entered pleas to criminal possession of a firearm and felony flee and elude. The state dismissed a charge of possession of cocaine.
Officials say the chase started because law enforcement was watching for him in connection with a murder in Ford County.
In addition to the murder charge, Gutierrez is also charged with aggravated endangerment of a child, criminal possession of a firearm by a felon and defacing identification marks of a firearm.
The charges in Ford County come after police found 30-year-old Natasha Pruitt dead of a gunshot wound.
Gutierrez is being returned to Ford County to face the additional charge.
Montrose, Mo. -The teen girl missing from her home in Missouri is safe.
Hannah Sue Kennish was found in Albuquerque, New Mexico Raymond Vallia, 55, according to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office.
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On Monday afternoon, the Henry County Sheriff’s Office issued an Amber Alert in the search for Hannah Sue Kennish.
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Montrose, Mo.- The Henry County Sheriff’s office is looking for Hannah Sue Kennish who went missing from her home on Sunday morning.
Hannah disappeared from her Montrose, Missouri home sometime between 8 a.m. 10:15 a.m. on Sunday. Montrose is 90 minutes south and east of Kansas City.
Authorities say that the back door to the house was found open by the teen’s mother, and a search of the area came up empty.
Hannah is 13 years old. She is 5’2″ tall and weights 130 pounds. She has brown hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a matching coral-colored shoes and Capri pants with the word “FAITH” in white letters on the front, gray ballet shoes and a dark purple jacket.
If you have any information regarding Hannah’s disappearance or you know of her whereabouts, please call 911 or the Henry County Missouri Sheriff’s Office at 660-885-7021 or the Missouri Highway Patrol at 816-622-0800.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Prosecutors have filed a misdemeanor charge against Union Pacific Railroad over a 2012 spill of sulfuric acid after a derailment at the company’s Herington yard in central Kansas.
A criminal information filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Kansas alleges the railroad spilled 114,297 pounds of sulfuric acid from a railcar in Herington into Lime Creek.
Company spokesman Mark Davis says Union Pacific is “committed to protecting the environment now and for future generations.” He says there is no evidence of criminal intent, adding the company is disappointed by the government’s decision to pursue the misdemeanor charge.
The railroad is accused of violating the Federal Water Pollution Control Act during the Jan. 8, 2012 incident.
If convicted, the railroad is subject to a maximum fine of $200,000 per violation.
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WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Federal prosecutors have filed a misdemeanor charge against Union Pacific Railroad over a 2012 spill of sulfuric acid in Kansas.
A criminal information filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Kansas alleges the railroad spilled 114,297 pounds of sulfuric acid from a railcar in Herington into Lime Creek. Such documents are filed with the consent of the defendant and typically indicate that a plea deal is in the works.
Email and phone messages left for a spokesman at Union Pacific were not immediately returned.
The railroad is charged with one count of violating the Federal Water Pollution Control Act for the Jan. 8, 2012 incident.
If convicted, the railroad is subject to a maximum fine of $200,000 per violation.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A judge has granted preliminary approval to a proposed settlement of more than $730,000 in the class-action lawsuit brought against Tyson by workers at the company’s meatpacking plant in Emporia. The deal ends a nearly eight-year legal battle.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten also cleared the way on Monday for notices to go out to the nearly 4,900 affected current and former workers. The court scheduled a final approval and fairness hearing for July 2 at the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas.
The lawsuit alleges that Tyson did not pay its workers for the time they spent putting on and taking off protective clothing and walking.
Under the proposal, the workers would split about $377,000. Their attorneys would receive about $351,000 in attorney fees.
WELLINGTON- Three people were injured in an accident just before 11 a.m. on Monday in Sumner County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Freightliner semi driven by Lance L. Arbuckle, 27, Wichita, was traveling on U.S. 81 two miles north of Wellington.
The truck made a left turn in front of a 2008 Pontiac G6 driven by Amanda M. Drake, 25, Conway Springs,
Drake and a passenger Jocelyn Ashley, 100, Conway Springs, were transported to South Central Medical Center.
Another passenger Ashley R. Drake, 20, Norwich, was transported to Wesley Medical Center.
Arbuckle was not injured
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
About 1,500 high school students from 60 schools will display their art in Fort Hays State University’s 41st annual High School Art Exhibition from 10 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, April 8, in the Gross Memorial Coliseum Arena.
Admission is free.
The Department of Art and Design will host the event.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Wichita man was sentenced to prison for stealing a wedding ring from a woman who was dying in her car at a drive-through restaurant.
Twenty-one-year-old Daquantrius Johnson was sentenced Monday to 11 years and four months for the theft in December 2013 at a Taco Bell restaurant. Prosecutors say he and two other men took the wedding ring, a purse and other items from Danielle Zimmerman as she was unconscious from a brain aneurism. She died the next day.
Johnson will serve the sentence consecutively to sentences for other crimes, for a total sentence of about 20½ years.
Despite public pleas and possible rewards, Zimmerman’s ring was never found.
John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.
My high school student, a senior, had a dilemma. He wanted to be a medical doctor and he had been accepted into the pre-med programs at both Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities. I was not too sympathetic about his “problem.” He was fortunate and would do well at either school.
Back then, I was teaching at Hong Kong International School. Virtually 100 percent of our students graduated to attend (mostly elite) colleges and universities. HKIS served children of consulate officials and corporate families. Highly skilled upper level folks from Union Carbide and Caterpillar and other international companies came to Hong Kong for twice to triple their regular U.S. salary and with all housing, school and medical expenses paid. Highly-educated and motivated parents had hard working and motivated kids.
Simply, we turned out the best because we only took the best. There were no poverty kids in our school because there were no Westerners living in poverty in Hong Kong. None from broken homes. We had no “high need” or “at risk” kids. Class grades were not bell-shaped but were mostly A’s and a few B’s. Everyone was college-bound.
HKIS raided American schools. They brought over the best-of-the-best teachers they could find. But that was not the most critical factor. When we had a student teacher rookie, or a local hire who was not a veteran, the students’ performance remained high. Pull that whole HKIS faculty and put them in an inner city school in our big cities, a school serving students from poverty homes and mostly single parents, and there would be few students with the dilemma of choosing between Johns Hopkins and Harvard. Despite their best efforts, that bell-shaped curve would shift lower.
Unfortunately, teachers are seen as the only factor in student success. Perhaps this wrong perception is due to the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver where Jaime Escalante taught students calculus. What was not discussed in the film was that the students who remained in his class were those who were motivated and hard working. While his students at Garfield High School, East Los Angeles from 1974 to 1991 were not wealthy, they were there because they could meet his expectations for rigor and hard work. The lazy, those who had fried their brains on drugs, the videogame addicted—were not in his class.
Unfortunately, Schools of Education invented “outcomes.” List the outcomes you expect and then hold the teachers “accountable” for meeting those outcomes. It is simple-minded.
But apply this mythology—that all students will meet outcomes—to medicine, where every patient who enters a hospital will come out cured. Nope, the best of doctors lose patients and the best of teachers lose students. Outcomes are always narrowly defined. In medicine, if we define “healthy” as a normal temperature, doctors would distribute aspirin to get everyone’s fever down, since that is the measure of the hospital and doctor, and ignore conditions that are not measured. That of course is exactly what has happened under the last decade of No Child Left Behind outcomes that only measured language and math—the rest of the curriculum got shortened or dropped.
For patients whose chances of surviving are least, their only hope may rest with the best surgeon. As a result, the best surgeons may have the highest death rates. Use outcomes bean-counting and they will be penalized. Hospitals will then play “hot potato,” re-directing ambulances bringing in terminal patients.
Measuring and awarding money based on “outcomes” is now the political football in the Topeka Legislature. Some want to measure outcomes 2-years-out; others want the bean-counting to begin immediately. They are both wrong. You cannot improve education by funding schools based on simple-minded measures any more than you can improve medicine by funding hospitals on their survival rates. Rich schools will get richer. Poor schools will get poorer.
Good education depends on good teachers. Under the current oppressive actions and bad attitude of most state legislatures, the number of young college students who want to enter teaching is nose-diving not only in Kansas but nationwide.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union says a Kansas bill on religious student organizations would allow discrimination on campus.
The House Federal and State Affairs Committee considered a bill Monday that would prevent universities and colleges from denying benefits to religious student organizations based on their membership policies.
The bill would allow religious student organizations to require their members to comply with the associations’ sincerely held religious beliefs.
Supporters said this would protect religious organizations from being pushed off campus.
But ACLU Executive Director for Kansas Micah Kubic testified that the bill would allow student groups to have discriminatory policies and still receive public funds.
Republican Rep. Stephanie Clayton from Overland Park expressed concerns that the bill was too broad and could be widely interpreted.
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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union plans to testify before a Kansas legislative committee against a bill designed to protect religious groups on public college campuses.
The House Federal and State Affairs Committee was having a hearing Monday on the bill. The Senate approved the measure earlier this month.
The bill would prohibit state universities, community colleges and technical colleges from refusing to recognize or from denying campus resources to groups that won’t let non-believers join.
The ACLU of Kansas contends the measure would require public colleges to provide support to groups that discriminate.
Supporters say the bill protects groups’ religious liberties. It’s a response to a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision saying that universities can adopt anti-bias policies requiring groups to accept anyone who wants to join.
The American Democracy Project and the Center for Civic Leadership will be screening “Inequality for All,” featuring for U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Fort Hays State University’s Memorial Union in the Stouffer Lounge. A discussion follows at 8 p.m.
SALINA -Rural firefighters responded to a pair of fires on Saturday in Saline County.
The Sheriff’s office reported just after 10:30 a.m. a lawn tractor owned by Jeffery Stover caught fire in the 1100 hundred block of Hidden Springs Road.
He tried to put the fire out with a coat before calling for assistance.
Loss of the mower is placed at $6,000 according to officials.
At 4 p.m. fire crews were sent to the 1600 block of North Brownhill Road near Brookville.
A trailer with 10 bales of hay caught fire.
Authorities said damage to the trailer was $4,500. There were no injuries.
Photo credit: David J. Cable/Arcadia Photographic UK
Sacha Baron Cohen has NOT been confirmed to play Freddie Mercury in a biopic about the flamboyant Queen frontman.
Queen guitarist Brian May posted on his website that the band’s manager, Jim Beach, was just making “a small joke” last Thursday at the Artist and Manager Awards when he said Cohen had officially signed on to the long-delayed project.
Entertainment Weekly.com reported the story on Saturday, quoting Beach as saying, “You have probably followed the saga of the famous Queen-Freddie Mercury biopic which has been developing in Hollywood for the last seven years.
An important breakthrough is that we have now managed to persuade Sacha Baron Cohen to write, produce, and direct this movie, and he has also agreed to star.”
May said Beach was just joking. “I’m afraid some folks might have taken it seriously,” wrote May.
The biopic about Mercury, who died in 1991 at the age of 45 due to complications from AIDS, has been in the works since about 2010. However, sources told EW the project has been stalled due to Cohen “not seeing eye to eye with the remaining members of Queen who have script and director approval.”
According to EW, Cohen desired a “gritty R-rated tell-all,” while the band apparently preferred a PG-version of Mercury’s life.
