KANSAS CITY – A Kansas City man was sentenced in federal court today for his role in an armed robbery that was part of a three-month-long spree of armed robberies at metropolitan area businesses, according to the United State’s Attorney.

Donald L. Boggess, also known as “Old School,” 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian C. Wimes to 11 years and nine months in federal prison without parole. The court also ordered Boggess to pay $19,796 in restitution, for which he is jointly and severally liable.

On Dec. 19, 2017, Boggess pleaded guilty to the Aug. 30, 2015, armed robbery of a 7-Eleven store at 1701 Independence Ave., Kansas City.

The crime spree, which lasted from July 25 to Oct. 20, 2015, involved 13 armed robberies of businesses in the metropolitan area in which $19,796 was stolen.

Boggess is the fourth and final defendant to be sentenced in this case. Isaac J. Williams, also known as “Dat Flyguy,” 26, of Kansas City, Mo., also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison without parole. Rahnice J. Clay, 25, of Kansas City, Mo., also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison without parole. Deitra M. Turner, also known as “Detrix Mob Turner,” 26, of Kansas City, Mo., also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison without parole.

During the armed robbery of the metroPCS store at 4513 Independence Ave., Kansa City, Mo., on Aug. 18, 2015, metroPCS robbery, Boggess was armed with a silver handgun while Williams stood by the door looking out. When Boggess demanded money, the sales clerk motioned to the cash register and Boggess opened the drawer, took approximately $2,627, and stuffed it into his hooded sweatshirt pocket. While taking the cash from the drawer, Boggess continued to point the handgun at the clerk and another employee. Williams and Boggess then fled the store and got into the getaway car with the Turner and Clay. All four divided and shared in the proceeds from the robbery.

During the armed robbery of the Phillips 66 gas station at 7531 Troost Ave., Kansas City, Mo., on Aug. 21, 2015, Williams and Turner entered the store, while Clay was at the gas pump as the lookout and Boggess remained in the car, as he was the getaway driver. The cashier was in the middle of a transaction with a customer who had just handed her a $100 bill when Williams pushed the customer out of the way and demanded the money in the register. He then pulled out a silver handgun that was wrapped in a t-shirt and pointed it at her. The cashier opened the cash register and took out all of the cash and placed it onto the counter. Williams grabbed the cash, then he and Turner (who was standing by the door as a lookout) left the store. They got into Boggess’s vehicle and Boggess drove away. The money from the robbery was split equally among the four of them.

Clay admitted that, in two robberies, she entered the store prior to the robbery then left the store when there were no other customers. A short time later, Williams and Turner entered the store. Williams, armed with a handgun, demanded money.

During the armed robbery of the metroPCS store at 723 Southwest Blvd., Kansas City, Mo., on Sept. 11, 2015, Turner grabbed a blue metroPCS bag from the store to put the money in to. The employee handed over approximately $312. Williams and Turner ordered her to the back to unlock the safe, but she was unable to unlock the safe.

During the armed robbery of the GameStop store at 906 Westport Rd., Kansas City, Mo., on Sept. 12, 2015, Turner took one of the employees to the back and collected game systems. The employee stated he handed over approximately $555 and games. Two witnesses outside the GameStop store saw Williams and Turner run to and get into Clay’s red Toyota; Clay, the getaway driver, was already in the car. Williams, Turner, and Clay split the money and video game systems.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Schoolteacher raises of $5,000 are on the table in Texas — a proposed pay hike that ranks among the biggest in the U.S. since a wave of teacher unrest began last year. But protests aren’t why the money is suddenly available.

Texas hasn’t even had a teacher strike. But as in other GOP strongholds this spring, lawmakers who have spent years clashing with public schools by slashing budgets, ratcheting up testing and cheerleading private schools are blinking in the face of election pressure as much as picket lines.

Rattled by a dreadful midterm election for Republicans — and looking ahead to 2020 — conservative-leaning states including Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina are pouring new money into schools. And to ensure it doesn’t go unnoticed, Republicans are making a show of a renewed commitment to public classrooms, courting voters turned off by years of cost-cutting that catered to the party’s base.

Nowhere is this political whiplash more on display than in Texas, where just two years ago conservatives pushed heavily for private school vouchers and restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students could use. That was followed last November by Republicans losing 14 seats in the Statehouse, their worst election in a generation.

To some, the message was clear. Said Republican state Sen. Kel Seliger, quoting a top GOP official “way up” whom he wouldn’t name: “Urban Texas is now blue. Suburban Texas is purple and it’s rural Texas that is still red. And then what does that mean for the future” of the party?

Seliger added, “You’re not hearing anything about a bathroom bill. You’re not hearing anyone utter the word ‘vouchers’ this session. And I think that’s significant.”

A nationwide teacher revolt that began with walkouts in West Virginia in early 2018 is still kicking. In Kentucky, recurring “sickouts” for teacher protests forced schools to cancel classes, and a six-day teacher strike in Los Angeles ended with a 6 percent pay hike and commitment to smaller classes.

Elsewhere, new worries over elections are moving Republicans to act on their own.

In Oklahoma, the state’s new CEO-turned-governor , Kevin Stitt, made giving teachers another pay boost a key plank of his campaign. He’s pushing ahead with an additional $1,200 pay increase for classroom teachers, a year after several Republican opponents of a pay package were ousted in GOP primaries. In South Carolina, a state budget passed by House lawmakers would give all teachers a 4 percent raise and bump the minimum salary for first-year teachers to $35,000. Teachers there have asked for a 10 percent raise.

Public concern about education is growing, said Pat McFerron, a GOP pollster and strategist in Oklahoma. “In a red state where Republicans are in control, it’s going to fall on Republicans.”

Texas is in the middle of the pack nationally in classroom funding for the state’s 5.5 million public school students, and teacher pay is about $7,000 below the national average. In recent years, conservatives have pushed for directing some funding to students attending private and religious schools.

That talk has now gone silent. Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who pushed the “bathroom bill” in 2017, is now calling for $5,000 teacher raises, while House Republicans have called for an extra $9 billion for public schools.

“There’s no doubt about it. When Dan Patrick goes from bathrooms and vouchers to, ‘We need to give every teacher a $5,000 pay raise,’ his pollsters are telling him you took a bath with educators this time around,” said Louis Malfaro, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. “We’re nine seats off from flipping the House.”

Not all Republicans are running scared: Some GOP lawmakers in West Virginia and Arizona have proposed measures that would effectively punish striking teachers, but those bills have had little support. And while governors in at least 18 states have proposed teacher pay hikes this year, elections are not always the driving factor, said Michael Leachman of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

For both parties, “you do have a political constituency that supports public schools that reaches deep into the business community, deep into school boards and parent groups,” Leachman said.

Near Austin, Shea Smith brings home about $55,000 in her 10th year teaching in the Del Valle school district. She took a half-day from work to take part in a rally for more funding this month at the Texas Capitol, where some Republican lawmakers stood side-by-side with union leaders.

“I think people are fired up because of the results in November,” Smith said.

By STEPHEN KORANDA
Kansas News Service

The last week might have been easier for Gov. Laura Kelly if every staffer and appointee had stuck to sharing cat photos on Twitter instead of political opinions.

The Kansas GOP pounced quickly on her newly formed Democratic administration for the social media transgressions of its people. With divided government in Topeka, GOP leaders won’t miss a chance to point out potential errors.

Partisan tweets prompted the removal of a Kansas Department of Transportation staffer and, in quick succession, the withdrawal of Kelly’s nominee for the Kansas Court of Appeals. The governor’s choice to head the Kansas Department of Commerce also got a verbal lashing from Republicans because of a social media post.

“Let’s be frank. There have been some real missteps here,” Kansas Republican Party Chairman Michael Kuckelman said in an interview. “Had they not been fixed, they have serious consequences.”

The Kelly administration acted swiftly after a tweet was sent Sunday from a KDOT account calling President Donald Trump a “delusional communist.” Within hours, the tweet was taken down and the employee responsible, a media relations specialist in the agency’s south-central district, was fired.

KDOT Secretary Julie Lorenz nonetheless had to answer for it at her confirmation hearing Monday. She’d been out on a run when her chief of staff alerted her to the problem.

“I found that I ran home a little faster than I otherwise would have anticipated,” she said. “It needed to be taken care of and it was.”

Old tweets about the president derailed Kelly’s nomination to fill a seat on the Kansas Court of Appeals just days later.

Labette County District Court Judge and former Republican lawmaker Jeffry Jack had posted tweets in 2017 that included profanity, calls for gun control and insults aimed at the president.

“A president who is objectively ignorant, lazy and cowardly,” read one tweet.

That drew condemnation Monday from Senate leaders being asked to confirm the judge, and a day later Kelly herself withdrew the nomination.

“It’s unacceptable for a sitting judge, who must be seen as unbiased and impartial, to post personal political views on social media,” the governor said in a statement Tuesday morning. “It’s clear that despite a thorough review and investigation, this was missed.”

Kelly’s nomination to head the Department of Commerce is still headed for a vote in the full Senate, but without a favorable committee recommendation partially because of his social media history.

Acting Commerce Secretary David Toland is pictured in a post from when he worked for the economic development organization Thrive Allen County. The post made a joking allusion to former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and local Republican Sen. Caryn Tyson as things that kept him up at night.

“Of concern to me,” Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner said at Toland’s confirmation hearing, “is the disparaging representation, particularly of one of our Senate colleagues.”

Toland said it was a prank and apologized.

“It was a juvenile prank, and it shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “I regret that it did.”

He explained the image of him in bed with photos of Brownback and Tyson on the nightstand beside him was posted as a joke by the Thrive Allen staff.  Toland was sleeping in a downtown office to raise awareness for a sleep clinic at the local hospital.

Politics were also at play in his grilling, Toland suspected.

He was treasurer for Kelly’s campaign for governor. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that Toland’s policy proposals in Allen County had clashed with business interests of the newly elected vice chair of the Kansas Republican Party, Virginia Crossland-Macha.

“This is Topeka. There are always politics,” Toland said after the first day of his hearing.

Still, Baumgardner and others said Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles should be some of the first items reviewed when considering potential nominees.

“It is 2019,” Baumgardner said. “For us to not start at social media first in the vetting process is not being self-aware of the society that we live in.”

Kelly has asked her judicial nominating committee to review the applicants for the Appeals Court job again, and this time check their social media activity before sending her new names for consideration.

Employees in the administration are subject to the executive branch social media policy and agencies sometimes have additional guidelines.

“Our staff has had numerous conversations about the importance of respectful, responsible social media behavior,” Kelly spokesperson Ashley All said.

Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A federal appeals court says a judge went too far by dismissing a Kansas drug indictment after finding that a prosecutor violated the defendant’s right to a fair trial.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson should retry Gregory Orozco.

Robinson dismissed Orozco’s two drug charges in December 2017 after finding that federal prosecutor Terra Morehead intimidated a witness into not testifying and belatedly disclosed evidence.

Morehead was also accused of misconduct in her handling of a case in the 1990s that caused a man to be imprisoned for nearly 23 years for a crime he didn’t commit.

The appeals court says Robinson never addressed why dismissing Orozco’s case was necessary to deter misconduct.

SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a fatal shooting and on Friday asked the public again for help with the investigation.

Just before 9p.m. March 16, police responded to the report of a shooting in the 1100 block of SW Hillsdale Street in Topeka, according to Lt. John Trimble.

Officers found a victim identified as 25-year-old Robert McKinsey James, unresponsive in the yard suffering what appeared to be several gunshot wounds.

Officers were able to secure the scene and first responders performed first aid on McKinsey. He was transported to an area hospital where he died, according to Trimble.

The suspect vehicle is described as an older, boxy, dark colored SUV that was seen fleeing from the area shortly after the shooting. The SUV had several occupants, according to Trimble.

Anyone with information regarding this crime is encouraged to contact the Topeka Police.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — A Kansas City area hospital has passed a follow-up inspection after state inspectors found that its staff failed to properly respond to an 83-year-old woman who died one day after undergoing a routine colonoscopy.

Cass Regional Medical Center in Harrisonville came under scrutiny after Martha Wright of Pleasant Hill died in August of internal bleeding. In November, inspectors found that the hospital hadn’t recognized the seriousness of the incident or done a proper review to determine how it happened.

Hospital officials said in an email that the designation was lifted after a follow-up inspection in February but also acknowledged new infractions for cleanliness that the hospital had to address.