LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A former Douglas County sheriff’s deputy has pleaded no contest to aggravated battery as part of a plea deal that dropped a charge of engaging in sexual activity with a female inmate.

47-year-old Mario Godinez entered a no contest plea to the felony charge on Wednesday. A judge ordered Godinez to immediately register as a sex offender because the crime was “sexually motivated.”

Godinez was charged in September with engaging in consensual sexual activity with a female inmate at the Douglas County Jail. An affidavit last year says Godinez admitted to having sex with the prisoner in his office at the jail and in his personal car.

Godinez was in charge of an inmate work release program at the jail. He resigned last April.

Godinez will be sentenced May 10.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A Kansas City man who threatened President Donald Trump and sped to the White House with a gun had driven 13 hours without stopping before he was pulled over along a West Virginia highway Wednesday, a trooper said.

Eric Leonardo Charron of Kansas City was arraigned in Preston County Magistrate Court on Thursday in Kingwood on charges of reckless driving and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm.

State police said Charron was going 130 mph — nearly twice the speed limit — on Interstate 68 when he was pulled over near Bruceton Mills. The incident prompted the interstate to be closed for nearly four hours.

Trooper D.W. Satterfield said in a criminal complaint that Charron, 42, indicated he was traveling to the White House and that he was running late to a dinner he was invited to by Trump. The suspect also said he had to travel to the Pentagon “to meet with the leader of the Army to return a phone,” according to the complaint.

Charron later said he had “special hearing” that “would tell him to do bad things once he arrived at the White House or The Pentagon,” Satterfield said, adding the “special hearing” also told Charron to remove Satterfield’s gun from its holster while being transported from the traffic stop.

Satterfield said a vehicle search turned up a handgun, 300 rounds of ammunition and gunpowder. In addition, manuscripts written by Charron contained “subjects ranging from time travel, levitating watercraft, and mythical creatures such as the ‘Chupacubra.’”

The trooper said Charron admitted using methamphetamine recently and his pupils were dilated despite bright conditions outside. Charron had driven through the night from his hometown, authorities said. The trooper didn’t notice any luggage in the vehicle.

Satterfield asked Charron why the vehicle’s remote key would not open the trunk, and Charron stated he had tampered with the fuses in an effort to “keep the CIA from listening to him through the radio.”

According to the court, Charron was ordered held either on $10,000 cash bond or upon Trump’s signature. Charron was remanded to the Tygart Valley Regional Jail.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Charron has an attorney who could comment on the charges.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two top leaders of the Kansas Highway Patrol are leaving the agency.

Gov. Laura Kelly announced Thursday in a news release that Col. Mark Bruce, the patrol’s superintendent, and Lt. Col. Randy Moon, an assistant superintendent, have resigned.

Kelly said Shawnee County Sheriff Herman Jones will take over the agency on Wednesday. Maj. Jason De Vore will be acting superintendent until Wednesday.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the governor’s spokeswoman, Ashley All, said she couldn’t comment on the departures because they were personnel matters.

Kelly said in December that she would retain Bruce because he was an effective leader and a strong advocate for law enforcement officers.

Jones led the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department since 2012 and was a highway patrol employee for more than 20 years.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City school district has agreed to apologize to three students who alleged their free speech rights were violated during a national classroom walkout for gun control.

The apologies are part of a settlement that the Shawnee Mission School District reached earlier this month with the American Civil Liberties Union. Training also is part of the settlement, whose terms became public Tuesday.

Issue arose last April when students across the country gathered to protest on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting in Colorado.

In the Shawnee Mission district, administrators confiscated a high school journalist’s camera. The lawsuit said they also forced an eighth-grader from a speaking platform and sent her home after she said that “The real issue is gun violence.”

SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a fatal accident that occurred just before 7p.m. Wednesday in Sedgwick County.

According to Lt. Tim Myers of the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department, Herbert Lawrence, 69, Derby, was standing outside of a disabled red Chevy truck at 63rd Street South and Grove in Wichita.

An eastbound white Chevy Silverado driven by John Fanning, 35, Derby, rear-ended the red truck forcing it over the curb and through a fence line.

EMS transported Lawrence, a passenger in the red Chevy Virginia Lawrence, 72, Derby, and Fanning to Wesley Medical Center. Herbert Lawrence was pronounced dead at 7:31 p.m., according to Myers.

By JOHN HANNA

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers have blown several informal deadlines for boosting funding for public schools to satisfy a court mandate because Republicans who control the Legislature are at odds over how to allocate the new dollars and what policy strings should be attached.

The state’s attorneys must file a written report with the Kansas Supreme Court by April 15, telling the justices how legislators responded to the high court’s ruling last yearthat spending on public schools is insufficient. The Legislature is set to start its annual spring break April 6 and not return to the Statehouse until May 1.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly urged legislators to pass her plan for an education funding increase of roughly $90 million a year by the end of February. Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, told lawmakers they should finish their work by March 15.

The Senate approved Kelly’s plan March 14. Top House Republicans back a plan to target new dollars to programs for at-risk students but wouldn’t bring it up for a debate this week because it did not have enough votes to pass. The House and Senate plan to begin negotiations next week on the final version of a school funding bill anyway — without a clear sense of their path forward.

“We’ve got to have an answer to the court by the time we go home next week,” Senate Vice President Jeff Longbine, a moderate Emporia Republican, said Wednesday. “Time is of the essence.”

Four local school districts sued the state over education funding in 2010, and the Supreme Court has issued six rulings directing legislators to increase education funding, now more than $4 billion a year. The high court said a 2018 law promising to phase in a $548 million increase by the 2022-23 school year wasn’t sufficient because it did not account for inflation in recent years.

Educators have argued that legislators should just increase the state’s total aid to its 286 school districts, and Kelly’s plan does that.

Top Republicans in the House have argued that new funds should target helping struggling students, including children with behavioral and mental health problems. Their proposal actually would spend $14 million more than Kelly proposes during the budget year that begins in July — but it includes grants for school safety upgrades and other specific programs.

“Why wouldn’t we target it?” said House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a conservative Wichita Republican. “What’s the purpose of doing this? It’s to move the needle. It’s to make education better.”

Many Republicans, particularly conservatives, also want to tie the money to education policy changes. The strategy worked well for them in 2014, when they successfully repealed a state law guaranteeing tenure to teachers who’d been in the classroom at least three years.

House conservatives initially pushed an education bill that included a proposal to give parents of children in public schools state-funded scholarships so that their children could move to other schools, including private ones. But they backed off that proposal and others, and the House passed a narrower policy bill this week on a 63-61 vote.

Democrats and many moderate Republicans contend that a straightforward funding bill is the best approach and that lawmakers ought to leave decisions about how new dollars are spent to local school boards.

“I think the best way to do it is to stick with what I proposed initially and what the Senate passed, with a clean, simple deal-with-inflation factor and move on,” Kelly told reporters Wednesday.

Trooper Ben Gardner of the Kansas Highway Patrol today issued a plea for car owners to check their vehicles for recalled Takata airbags. The recall affects between 65 million to 70 million airbags that need to be recalled, he said. For more information on the recall or to check your vehicle’s VIN number, click HERE.

Please listen and please retweet….https://t.co/y0bzsqtgOi#ProtectThePeopleYouLove #Takata pic.twitter.com/VxqVTeLm0y

— Trooper Ben (@TrooperBenKHP) March 28, 2019