SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas woman on theft charges after a chase and crash.

Just after 11:30p.m. Monday, police observed a 2017 Honda Civic with an illegal license tag near 13th and Harding in Wichita, according to officer Charley Davidson.

Police attempted to stop the vehicle but the driver later identified as 22-year-old Makenzie Simmer of Wichita accelerated and sped away. Police began a short chase until the Honda struck a pole and a tree. Simmer than ran from the crash and jumped into a nearby pond, according to Davidson. Police removed her from the pond and took her into custody without further incident.

Police confirmed the vehicle was stolen. There were no injuries reported, according to Davidson.
Simmer is being held on requested charges of evade and elude police, resist arrest, auto theft and numerous traffic charges.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic state Rep. Brandon Whipple has defeated the incumbent mayor in Wichita after a contentious race marked by partisan meddling.

Mayor Jeff Longwell lost his bid in Tuesday’s election to keep the office he has held since 2015.

Unofficial results show Whipple received 46 percent of the vote to 36 percent for Longwell. Less than 18 percent wrote in a candidate for mayor.

The race was inflamed by an online ad that falsely suggested Whipple had been accused of sexual harassment at the Statehouse. Republican leaders linked a GOP lawmaker to the ad and called for his resignation. Wichita mayoral candidates do not run representing political parties.

Whipple emphasized his budgeting experience in the state Legislature and criticized Whipple’s 2017 vote in favor of rolling back former Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts.

Whipple was elected to the House in 2012 and is a lecturer at Wichita State University.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — Kansas City voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved removing Dr. Martin Luther King’s name from one of the city’s most historic boulevards, less than a year after the city council decided to rename The Paseo for the civil rights icon.

Unofficial results vote showed the proposal to remove King’s name received nearly 70% of the vote, with just over 30% voting to retain King’s name.

The debate over the name of the 10-mile (16.1 kilometer) boulevard on the city’s mostly black east side began shortly after the council’s decision in January to rename The Paseo for King. Civil rights leaders who pushed for the change celebrated when the street signs went up, believing they had finally won a decades-long battle to honor King, which appeared to end Kansas City’s reputation as one of the largest U.S. cities in the country without a street named for him.

But a group of residents intent on keeping The Paseo name began collecting petitions to put the name change on the ballot and achieved that goal in April.

The campaign has been divisive, with supporters of King’s name accusing opponents of being racist, while supporters of The Paseo name say city leaders pushed the name change through without following proper procedures and ignored The Paseo’s historic value.

Emotions reached a peak Sunday, when members of the “Save the Paseo” group staged a silent protest at a get-out-the-vote rally at a black church for people wanting to keep the King name. They walked into the Paseo Baptist Church and stood along its two aisles. The protesters stood silently and did not react to several speakers that accused them of being disrespectful in a church but they also refused requests from preachers to sit down.

The Save the Paseo group collected 2,857 signatures in April — far more than the 1,700 needed — to have the name change put to a public vote.

Many supporters of the Martin Luther King name suggested the opponents are racist, saying Save the Paseo is a mostly white group and that many of its members don’t live on the street, which runs north to south through a largely black area of the city. They said removing the name would send a negative image of Kansas City to the rest of the world, and could hurt business and tourism.

Supporters of the Paseo name rejected the allegations of racism, saying they have respect for King and want the city to find a way to honor him. They opposed the name change because they say the City Council did not follow city charter procedures when making the change and didn’t notify most residents on the street about the proposal. They also said The Paseo is an historic name for the city’s first boulevard, which was completed in 1899. The north end of the boulevard is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The City Council voted in January to rename the boulevard for King, responding to a yearslong effort from the city’s black leaders and pressure from the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights organization that King helped start.

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a minister and former Kansas City mayor who has pushed the city to rename a street for King for years, was at Sunday’s rally. He said the protesters were welcome, but he asked them to consider the damage that would be done if Kansas City removed King’s name.

“I am standing here simply begging you to sit down. This is not appropriate in a church of Jesus Christ,” Cleaver told the group.

Tim Smith, who organized the protest, said it was designed to force the black Christian leaders who had mischaracterized the Save the Paseo group as racist to “say it to our faces.”

“If tonight, someone wants to characterize what we did as hostile, violent, or uncivil, it’s a mischaracterization of what happened,” Smith said. “We didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything, we just stood.”

The Rev. Vernon Howard, president of the Kansas City chapter of the SCLU, told The Associated Press that the King street sign is a powerful symbol for everyone but particularly for black children.

“I think that only if you are a black child growing up in the inner city lacking the kind of resources, lacking the kinds of images and models for mentoring, modeling, vocation and career, can you actually understand what that name on that sign can mean to a child in this community,” Howard said.

If the sign were taken down, “the reverse will be true,” he said.

“What people will wonder in their minds and hearts is why and how something so good, uplifting and edifying, how can something like that be taken away?” he said.

But Diane Euston, a leader of the Save the Paseo group, said that The Paseo “doesn’t just mean something to one community in Kansas City.”

“It means something to everyone in Kansas City,” she said. “It holds kind of a special place in so many people’s hearts and memories. It’s not just historical on paper, it’s historical in people’s memory. It’s very important to Kansas City.”

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Four Kansas high school students face charges for armed robberies on Halloween, including one that was recorded on video and posted on social media.

A video shared on social media was related to the robberies. The suspects are students at Olathe High School in suburban Kansas City.

All four suspects have been taken into custody. They are charged in juvenile court, each with two felony counts of aggravated robbery.

Victims of both crimes told police that the robbers took clothing and electronics. The suspects were arrested later that night.

SEDGWICK COUNTY —Minimum-custody inmate Kyle Ingels was placed on escape status at approximately 6:48 p.m., Tuesday, after he walked away from the Wichita Work Release Facility, according to a media release from the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Ingels, a 32-year-old white male, left for work at 10:30 a.m. and was reported missing when he did not report back to the facility following work Tuesday evening. Ingels was last seen wearing a red hoodie with black writing on the sleeves, blue jeans, black boots, and a black baseball cap.

Ingels is currently serving a 60-month sentence for several convictions in Neosho County including theft, forgery, drug possession, and endangerment of a child. Engels had a prior drug conviction from Neosho County in 2007.

Ingels is 6 feet tall, 198 pounds with hazel eyes and brown hair.

Anyone with information on Ingels can call the Kansas Department of Corrections at 620-221-6660, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at (800) 572-7463 or local law enforcement at 911.

The walk-away is currently being investigated. New information will be released as it becomes available.

The Wichita Work Release Facility, a satellite unit of the Winfield Correctional Facility, is an all-male, minimum-custody state prison with a population of 250.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — Court documents say a Kansas City man had a blood-alcohol level that was three times the legal limit when he caused a deadly crash.

Thirty-nine-year-old Paul Dowdell was charged Saturday with driving while intoxicated in the deadly collision. No attorney is listed for him in online court records.

The Jackson County prosecutor’s office says Dowell had a blood-alcohol level of .295 in January when he crossed a lane divider on Interstate 470 in a Cadillac Eldorado and struck a tractor-trailer. The truck’s driver, Daniel Shafer, was ejected when the rig crashed into a concrete barrier. He died the next day.

Prosecutors say Dowdell left the hospital against medical advice before an officer arrived. He was arrested Saturday.

Court records show he has two prior DUI convictions in Missouri.