TROY, Kan. (AP) — A former nurses’ aide from Atchison has been sentenced to two years in prison for Medicaid fraud and other charges.
Sakakihara photo Doniphan Co.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in a news release that 26-year-old Janelle Lynn Sakakihara was sentenced Thursday for fraud and two counts of felony mistreatment of a dependent adult.
Investigators say Sakakihara abused several people in September 2017 while she worked as a nurses’ aide at a Highland Health Care and Rehabilitation Center.
She was among 10 people in seven Kansas counties charged in September 2018 as part of a statewide enforcement sweep that focused on people committing Medicaid fraud, stealing narcotics and/or mistreating dependent adults while working in health care facilities or board-and-care facilities that receive Medicaid funding.
HUTCHINSON— Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas felon with 18 previous convictions on new charges involving the passing of two counterfeit $20 bills to a pizza delivery driver in October.
According to police, 31-year-old William Crider was caught because he used similar counterfeit money in a case from last year.
Police took Crider into custody Thursday morning on suspicion of counterfeiting and one count of theft by deception.
Hutchinson police took a report of a delivery driver who received two counterfeit $20 bills where Crider lived. Detectives with the Repeat Offender Unit recognized the counterfeit currency as having been produced by Crider. The serial number on the two counterfeit $20 bills was identical to the bills Crider had been convicted of producing in the 2018 case.
A parole search of Crider’s residence Thursday morning turned up more counterfeit currency and other items pertaining to additional criminal cases. His previous convictions include identity theft, forgery, counterfeiting, theft, criminal use of a financial card and several for computer crimes.
RILEY COUNTY — A Kansas felon who escaped from custody Saturday in Manhattan is back in jail.
Calkins photo KDOC
Police arrested 33-year-old Cory Calkins just before 5 p.m. Thursday in the 300 Block of North 9th Street, according to the RCPD arrest report.
He is being held on a $44,000 bond for aggravated burglary, aggravated escape from custody, interference with LEO, possession of meth, possession of drug paraphernalia and theft.
Calkins has previous convictions for theft, burglary, “unlawful vol sex relations intercourse,” obstruction and for drugs, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections
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RILEY COUNTY —Police in Manhattan need help finding 33-year-old Cory Calkins, who escaped from custody Saturday morning.
Police arrested him on probable cause offenses of aggravated burglary, possession of meth, possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, according to a media release.
Calkins has previous convictions for theft, burglary, “unlawful vol sex relations intercourse,” obstruction and for drugs, according to the Kansas Department of corrections
Police reminded “If you see Calkins do not approach him and call 911.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A 70-year-old northwest Oklahoma man has pleaded guilty to trying to hire his business partner in Kansas to kill a man in Oklahoma City.
Court records show Vernon Wayne Brock of Alva signed a plea agreement Wednesday admitting he tried to “conduct a murder for hire” plot to kill the unidentified man.
Prosecutors say Brock asked his business partner in vape shots to kill the boyfriend of a former employee who had ended a sexual relationship with Brock. The employee and the business partner are not identified in court documents.
Brock was arrested and charged in April after giving the business partner a $5,000 check during a meeting in Kansas.
The original affidavit stated that Brock and the business partner owned 17 vape shops in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to pursue further charges in the case.
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OKLAHOMA CITY – A man who is co-owner of Vape Shops in Kansas and two other states has been charged by complaint with hiring someone to commit murder, according to First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester.
According to an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant filed in federal court Thursday, Vernon Wayne Brock, 69, of Alva, OK., hired a Kansas resident to commit a murder in Oklahoma City. The individual from Kansas is alleged to have contacted the FBI and cooperated in the investigation.
The affidavit states that Brock and the individual from Kansas are partners in 17 vape shops in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma and that Brock was upset with a former vape shop employee who refused to continue a sexual relationship with him. Brock allegedly wanted the individual from Kansas to arrange the murder of the former employee’s boyfriend in Oklahoma City in exchange for $5,000.
According to the affidavit, Brock identified the boyfriend by sending a picture to the individual from Kansas and confirming “that’s the guy we want dead.” The affidavit includes several alleged quotes by Brock from recorded conversations between Brock and the individual from Kansas, including:
“Are they going to thump her around a little bit? And do him? Cause that’s what I wanted.”
“I’d rather do him, thump her and I mean thump her hard. And tell her if she says one word to the cops about anything there will be someone come back to get her . . . .”
“The main thing is for them to throw the scent off of everything. . . . What they want to say to him is, . . . you didn’t pay us for our drugs or something like that, and you owe us a million dollars, then pop, before he has anything to say either way.”
FBI agents arrested Brock on the afternoon of April 3, with the assistance of the Woods County Sheriff’s Office, after Brock delivered a $5,000 check to the individual from Kansas at a café in Harper, Kansas. Brock appeared Thursday afternoon for an initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Shon T. Erwin.
If found guilty of murder-for-hire, Brock faces a potential penalty of ten years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release.
SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a fatal December 2018 crash and have made an arrest.
Black photo Sedgwick Co.
Just after 3:30a.m. December 20, 2018, a vehicle driven by Hunter Nelson Black, 22, didn’t stop at the stop sign at the intersection of 143 Street East and 79th Street South, according to the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department.
The crash killed 24-year-old Logan Owens. The other driver was not injured.
Authorities presented the case to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s office. On Wednesday morning, deputies booked Black into the Sedgwick County jail on a requested charge of involuntary manslaughter; in commission of a DUI suspended/revoked driver’s license, according to the Sedgwick County arrest report.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — Kansas City leaders and residents on Wednesday began what is likely to be a challenging conversation about how to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and recover from wounds inflicted during a nearly yearlong debate over naming a street for the civil rights icon in the majority white city.
photo courtesy Save the Paseo
On Tuesday, Kansas City voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to rename a 10-mile boulevard from King’s name back to The Paseo, which it has been called since it was completed in 1899. The vote came less than a year after the city council approved renaming the boulevard for King, after years of advocacy from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and mostly black civic leaders.
Representatives from both sides of the issue vowed Wednesday to find another way to honor King and perhaps show other cities how to peacefully unify around the issue.
Diane Euston, a spokeswoman for the “Save the Paseo” group that led the successful petition drive, said the group has been brainstorming for months about ways to honor King if the ballot measure passed, and in a meeting last week with Mayor Quinton Lucas, who strongly supported the King name, members made it clear they intend to be part of that conversation.
“I believe we are going to take positive strides,” she said. “We can in the long run be an example across the nation about what unity is going to look like, what consensus looks like. The people have spoken, and people need to continue to speak in a positive manner in order to show Kansas City is an example of the democratic process while continuing to ensure we honor Martin Luther King.”
Save the Paseo members, many of whom are black, said throughout the campaign that the effort to replace King’s name was not about race. They contended the council didn’t follow proper city process when it voted in January to rename the boulevard for King and didn’t properly engage residents affected by the change. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other mostly black leaders accused Paseo supporters of being motivated by racism. Kansas City is 60.3% white and 28.7% black, according to the U.S. Census.
Whether the SCLC will join in the new discussions remains unclear. Its representatives didn’t return messages Wednesday seeking reaction to the vote.
Lucas, who is black and was on the city council when the name was changed, acknowledged that city leaders and the SCLC could have handled the renaming decision better and will learn from Tuesday’s vote. He expects the community outreach and conversation to take some time but said that effort is important.
“I think in terms of the next steps, most everybody I talked to remains committed to honoring Dr. King and his service to the country,” Lucas said. “We have a positive opportunity coming out of this. Every now and then we might need a painful start, but people want to make sure we get it right, that we get the collaboration right.”
Alissia Canady, a former city councilwoman who was one of the few black leaders in the city to object to renaming The Paseo, said she also sees the controversy as an opportunity to honor King but also address other issues such as crime and economic inequity.
“We need to have a citywide conversation and be intentional about manifesting King’s dreams, rather than just building another statue or duplicating what others have done,” she said. “It’s a huge opportunity for us to be innovative.”
The next steps are crucial for Kansas City, both to heal from the campaign and to protect its national reputation, said Derek Alderman, a geography professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville who has studied the naming of streets for King for decades. Kansas City is one of the largest cities in the U.S. without a street named for King, in a country where, as of 2017, 955 U.S. cities had streets named for him.
“It’s a good sign that people are wanting to come forward and work with the city, but they need to understand it’s going to require sacrifice,” Alderman said. “It’s not as easy as ‘let’s find a convenient street to name for Dr. King.’ They’ll have to change the identity of a street they’ve known for a long time, with business and property owners to bear some costs, along with hard discussions of racism and exclusion. I’m not saying it should be divisive, but it needs to be accompanied with really genuine, hard conversations.”
U.S Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a former Kansas City mayor who unsuccessfully tried early on to negotiate a compromise on the naming issue, said he’s concerned how Kansas City’s image will suffer when pictures of city workers taking the King signs down are transmitted nationwide. That will occur at some point after the election board certifies Tuesday’s results.
Cleaver said he chooses to believe most of the people who supported The Paseo name were not motivated by racial bias, but that message will be hard to communicate to others.
When he called U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi Wednesday, the first thing Thompson said to Cleaver was “What in the world are you guys up in Kansas City doing?” Both men are black.
“When you have to try and explain it, it’s already a problem,” Cleaver said. “You’re trying to undo the beliefs that people have developed based on what they’ve seen and heard. It can take a long time to fix that damage.”
Canady said Kansas City leaders can’t be concerned about the optics of how the decision would look to others because they need residents’ confidence to address larger problems and repair the relationships with those who believed their voices were not heard in the street naming debate.
“This is a huge opportunity for Kansas City to be spotlighted for how it unified and engaged people in the civic process in a way we haven’t seen in years,” she said. “Hopefully as we go forward we can start with a clean state and consider all the possibilities.”
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Four suburban Kansas City high school students have been charged with two Halloween night armed robberies, one of which was recorded and circulated on social media.
Image from the robbery on Snapchat
Police in Overland Park say the teens took clothing and electronics in the two robberies, which were committed around 4:30 p.m. and 6:20 p.m. on Oct. 31. Police found the sport utility that the suspects had been driving around 10:30 p.m. and took the occupants into custody.
The teens are each charged in juvenile court with two felony counts of aggravated robbery. The media isn’t naming the teens because they are minors.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — A cold weather system had people in the Kansas City area and beyond wanting more than just a sweater. It also had them reaching for nose plugs.
Our thoughts: This cold front has a shallow mixing layer (up to 2kft) trapping everything into this shallow part of the atmosphere. The front moved quickly from IA to KC with strong winds which transported in an “agriculture” smell from farms N of here.
The National Weather Service speculated in a tweet that a cold front that swept into the metro Wednesday night carried farm odors with it and trapped them in the shallow part of the atmosphere. One person responded to the explanation saying, “I thought my dogs tracked in poo from outside! I’m not crazy.”
For those who experienced last night’s “questionable air quality” our high-resolution reverse trajectory model has found the likely source of last night’s odoriferous air mass. @fox4wxpic.twitter.com/vbopoVhr1p
Meteorologists later tweeted what they described as a high-resolution reverse trajectory model to explain the likely source of the “questionable air quality.”
Hay Middle School is hosting it’s annual Scholastic Book Fair. All the proceeds go to purchase books for the Wilson Elementary Library and Hays Middle School Library. The book fair is set up in the Hay Middle School Library and it is open to the public.
Just after 6p.m. Wednesday, police responded to report of a shooting in the 1400 Block of North Ohio Street in Wichita, according to Captain Brent Allred. At the scene, police located a 15-year-old later identified as Marion Wheaton who had been shot in his upper body. EMS transported him to a local hospital where he died.
Investigators have learned that Wheaton and two teenage friends walked to the area to meet with a 15-year-old boy and other unknown individuals to fight over an ongoing dispute that involved social media, according to Allred.
As Wheaton and his friends walked in the area, they were approached by a vehicle. A 15-year-old boy and unknown individuals exited the vehicle and shots were fired striking Wheaton.
This was not a random incident, according to Allred and police know some of the teens were involved in gang activity. Police know that there were basketball practices going on in the area and hope that those individuals will come forward with information. Authorities have not located the suspect vehicle and have not released details on the vehicle. Police have not reported an arrest.
It is the 24th criminal homicide in Wichita in 2019.
