SEDGWICK COUNTY— A Kansas felon has been arrested in connection with a fatal shooting outside a Wichita motel.
Kemmerly -photo Sedgwick Co.
The 31-year-old suspect identified as Christopher Kemmerly was arrested Monday night in the 700 Block on north Westridge in Wichita, according to the Sedgwick County booking report.
The shooting happened Sunday night when a man in his 30s was shot behind the Citi Host Motel in the 4400 Block of South Broadway, according to Police Captain Brent Allred.
A 26-year-old witness at the scene told police they found Justin Gaston injured and on the ground. The witness began rendering aid until EMS arrived. EMS pronounced Gaston dead just after 7p.m, according to Allred.
Investigators have learned that there were three individuals inside a reported stolen vehicle that pulled into the motel parking lot, according to Allred. There was an argument inside the vehicle. The suspect shot Gaston one time as he exited the vehicle. The disagreement was drug related, according to Allred.
Kemmerly was under state supervision for multiple crimes committed in Butler County, including aggravated arson, aggravated intimidation of a witness or victim, criminal use of explosives, criminal damage to property and a weapons violation, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.
Joan Gross, 88, of Hays, Kansas, died Sunday, February 17, 2019, at Hays Medical Center, Hays, Kansas.
She was born September 5, 1930, in Baltimore, Maryland to Robert and Ethel (McCommons) Shively.She married John M. Gross on November 26, 1948, in Elkton, Maryland.He preceded her in death on February 3, 2015.Joan and John celebrated 66 years of marriage together.
She retired from Traveler’s Inn as the executive secretary in 1995.She then moved with her husband John to Hill City, Kansas from Aurora, Colorado. During her time in Hill City she relished working in her garden, cross stitching, quilting and volunteering at the hospital as part of the Women’s Auxiliary Club. Joan and John moved to Hays, Kansas when John experienced health issues. Joan was a loving mom, grandmother (MomMom) and wife. She will be greatly missed by her family.
Survivors include four daughters, Ann Gross, Golden, CO; Susan Olezene, Littleton, CO; Terrie Woods and husband, Randy, Denver, CO; Candace Juntunen and husband Brad, Westminster, CO; three grandchildren, Carissa Le Brazidec and husband, Jean-Emilien; Elizabeth Juntunen and Nolan Juntunen.
She was preceded in death by her parents, her brother, Dale Shively and his wife, Nancy.
The family suggests memorials to Via Christi Village Care Center of Hays, Kansas.
There will be a private family inurnment in Colorado.
Services are entrusted to Cline’s-Keithley Mortuary of Hays, 1919, East 22nd Street, Hays, Kansas 67601.
The Ellis County Sheriff’s Office has received several reports from local citizens of phone calls related to a jury scam.
The basic jury scam is the caller identifies them self as a deputy sheriff or jailer and states there is a warrant out for failure to appear for jury duty. At times, the scammer will spoof a number to make it appear the call is coming from a law enforcement agency. The scammer states there is a fine and court costs that need to be paid to avoid being arrested.
Anyone receiving one of these calls should hang up on the caller. Do not pay any fine. Questions about jury duty can be answered by the Clerk of the District Court.
RILEY COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect in connection with a 2017 murder case.
Just before 4p.m. Tuesday authorities in Texas arrested Samantha Bland, 29, of Laredo, TX , according to the Laredo Police Department and the Webb County Sheriff’s Office.
Bland -photo RCPD
Bland was arrested on a Riley County District Court warrant for aggravated intimidation of a witness in connection with a report filed by the Riley County Police Department for murder in the 1st degree on October 28, 2017.
Bland was issued a total bond of $125,000.00 and remains in custody.
Feb. 28 & March 1, 2 – 7:30 P.M. Curtain
March 3 – 2:30 P.M. Matinee
Barefoot In The Park opened in 1963 and ran for 1,530 performances, winning a Tony Award.
Hilarious and clever, it firmly established Neil Simon as a master of comedy with his witty one-liners and snappy dialogue.
Newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter have completed their honeymoon and are moving into their first apartment. Corie is romantic, impulsive, and enthusiastic, while her husband is a “stuffy” young attorney more concerned with his legal career than with honeymoon bliss.
Lillian M. Weber, age 87, of Hays, KS, passed away on Tuesday, February 19, 2019, at Locust Grove Village in La Crosse, KS.
Funeral services will be at 10:00 A.M. on Thursday, February 21, 2019 at St. Nicholas of Myra Catholic Church, 2901 E. 13th Street, Hays. Burial will follow in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Hays.
Visitation will be held on Wednesday, February 20 from 4:00 P.M. – 7:30 P.M. at Brock’s-Keithley Funeral Chapel & Crematory, 2509 Vine St., Hays, KS 67601 and on Thursday from 9:00 A.M. until service time at the church.
A combined rosary and parish vigil service will be Wednesday at 6:30 PM at the funeral chapel.
To share a memory or to leave condolences for Lillian, please visit, www.keithleyfuneralchapels.com or by can be left via email at [email protected].
Arrangements are made by Brock’s-Keithley Funeral Chapel & Crematory, 2509 Vine St., Hays, KS 67601.
AURORA, Colo. — Arapahoe County prosecutors on Tuesday formally charged a Kansas man accused of kidnapping an Aurora woman and attempting to sexually assault another woman in Kansas days after he was released from prison.
Prosecutors levied eight counts against Tre Carrasco, 23, on Tuesday morning, including felony kidnapping, robbery and motor vehicle theft.
Aurora police arrested Carrasco on Feb. 12 after local SWAT officers “conducted a high risk stop” on a vehicle the Kansas native was suspected to have stolen days earlier.
Police originally charged Carrasco with five felony counts, including carjacking and attempted kidnapping. Prosecutors have since tacked on additional charges.
Carrasco is accused of following a woman to her car at about 1:30 p.m. Feb. 7 in the parking lot of the 24 Hour Fitness near Abilene Street and East Florida Avenue, according to an arrest affidavit filed against him.
The 38-year-old victim told police a man believed to be Carrasco stood at the driver’s side door of her silver Toyota Camry and told her to “scoot over.” The man then entered the car before she could close the door and said “scoot over or I’ll kill you,” according to the affidavit.
Carrasco is described as being 5 feet, 9 inches tall and 180 pounds.
The woman “immediately began to try and open the door to get out of the car,” according to the affidavit. The man reached over the victim and tried to prevent her from fleeing, but the woman was quickly able to escape the car and went back inside the local gym to call police. She had dropped her cell phone in the car before the man drove away toward the south exit of the parking lot.
The victim was not injured in the incident.
The victim described the man who stole her car as “between dark and light skinned … resembling the popular musician ‘The Weekend,’ ” according to the affidavit.
That description helped the victim and investigators identify Carrasco in a police line-up on Feb. 12. In their reports, police “noted Carrasco does have a passing resemblance to the singer.”
Four days before the car theft outside the Aurora gym, investigators in Kansas say Carrasco tried to rape a woman at gunpoint in Hays.
Hays detectives contacted Aurora police on Feb. 3 alerting them Carrasco was likely in Aurora and “there was a credible, suspected threat” he would commit the same crime, according to the local arrest document.
Carrasco was in Colorado last summer after entering an “out-of-state post release” program, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records. He was later picked up on a parole violation.
Aurora police issued multiple alerts for Carrasco and the stolen car following the reported incident at the Aurora gym. An Aurora officer spotted the stolen Toyota Camry at about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 11, and attempted to conduct a traffic stop, according to the affidavit.
But the driver and an unidentified passenger didn’t stop, and the Aurora officer didn’t pursue the car.
The arrest document did not specify why the officer did not follow the vehicle.
Carrasco was released from prison in Kansas on Feb. 1, according to Kansas DOC records and reports published in The Wichita Eagle newspaper.
Carrasco was sentenced to prison in April 2013 for several aggravated battery charges stemming from an incident in July 2011, according to Kansas DOC records.
Carrasco is a registered sex offender.
He incurred a litany of disciplinary infractions while in Kansas prisons between 2014 and 2018, including using stimulants, disobeying orders and disrespecting correctional officers.
Carrasco has not been arrested as an adult in Colorado prior to the incident this month, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.
Carrasco is being held at the Arapahoe County Jail on a $150,000 bond, according to court records.
It is currently unclear if or when Carrasco could be extradited to face his charges in Kansas.
He is currently scheduled to appear in Arapahoe County District Court at 8:30 a.m. on March 8 to face a pair of felony charges for being a fugitive of justice and wanted by another agency, according to court records.
Carrasco is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing in his Arapahoe County case at 1:30 p.m. on March 12, according to Vikki Migoya, spokeswoman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris had the best campaign roll-out. Amy Klobuchar’s snowy debut showed grit. Elizabeth Warren’s opening campaign video was a bit odd. Take it from an unlikely armchair pundit sizing up the 2020 Democratic field: President Donald Trump.
In tweets, public remarks and private conversations, Trump is making clear he is closely following the campaign to challenge him on the ballot. Facing no serious primary opponent of his own — at least so far — Trump is establishing himself as an in-their-face observer of the Democratic Party’s nominating process — and no one will be surprised to find that he’s not being coy about weighing in.
Presidents traditionally ignore their potential opponents as long as possible to maintain their status as an incumbent floating above the contenders who are auditioning for a job they already inhabit.
Not Trump. He’s eager to shape the debate, sow discord and help position himself for the general election. It’s just one more norm to shatter, and a risky bet that his acerbic politics will work to his advantage once again.
This is the president whose 240-character blasts and penchant for insults made mincemeat of his 2016 Republican rivals. And Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, said the president aims to use Twitter again this time to “define his potential opponent and impact the Democrat primary debate.”
But often Trump’s commentary reflects a peculiar sense of disengagement from the events of the day, as though he were a panelist on the cable news shows he records and watches, rather than their prime subject of discussion. He puts the armchair in armchair punditry.
“Personally, I think he missed his time,” Trump said Tuesday, hours after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ launched his second bid for the White House.
In an interview with The New York Times last month, Trump assessed Harris’ campaign like a talk show regular, declaring her opening moves as having a “better crowd, better enthusiasm” than the other Democrats.
Crowd size was also at play last week when he held a rally in El Paso, Texas, that was countered a few blocks away by one led by former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a potential 2020 candidate.
“So we have let’s say 35,000 people tonight, and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump observed, wildly exaggerating both numbers. “Not too good. In fact, what I would do is, I would say, that may be the end of his presidential bid.”
When Sen. Klobuchar announced her candidacy on a frigid day in her home state of Minnesota, Trump anointed her with a nickname of sorts, and a benign one at that: “By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!”
Inside the West Wing and in conversations with outside allies, Trump has been workshopping other attempts to imprint his new adversaries with lasting labels, according to two people on whom the president has tested out the nicknames. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with the president. He is also testing out lines of attack in public rallies, exploring vulnerabilities he could use against them should they advance to the general election.
Warren
No candidate has drawn more commentary and criticism from Trump than Sen. Warren, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat. Warren’s past claims of Native American heritage prompted Trump to brand her “Pocahontas” and he has shown no qualms about deploying racially charged barbs harking back to some of the nation’s darkest abuses.
Wading into a Twitter frenzy over an Instagram video Warren posted after she announced her exploratory committee while sharing a beer with her husband at their kitchen table, Trump jeered: “Best line in the Elizabeth Warren beer catastrophe is, to her husband, ‘Thank you for being here. I’m glad you’re here’ It’s their house, he’s supposed to be there!”
“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!” Trump tweeted.
Even in the midst of the partial government shutdown, those tweets mocking Warren were widely joked about by White House staff weary from the protracted closure, according to one aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. The person said the president repeatedly ridiculed Warren’s video in private conversations with aides and outside advisers.
Attention from Trump can drive up fundraising and elevate a candidate above a crowded field. But responding to attacks also distracts from a candidate’s message.
Trump’s rivals in the 2016 GOP primary learned that lesson as he bedeviled them with name-calling. Trump goaded Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida into making a thinly veiled insult of his manhood that quickly backfired, and weeks later he sucked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz into a brutal back-and-forth about an insult he had leveled at Cruz’s wife.
“The president has an ability to use social media to define his opponents and influence the primary debate in a way no sitting president before him has,” said former White House spokesman Raj Shah. “I expect him to take full advantage.”
On Friday, hours after declaring a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump tweeted a video made by a supporter that featured the president’s Democratic critics in Congress. Harris, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker were shown sitting dourly during the State of the Union address, set to the R.E.M. ballad “Everybody Hurts.”
The mocking video may have been taken down later in the day after a copyright complaint by the band, and re-cut using Trump-supporter Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” But the message to Trump’s would-be 2020 rivals, and people girding for another wild presidential cycle, remained anchored to the lyrics of that R.E.M. song: “Hold on.”
U.S. Senator Jerry Moran’s opposition to President Trump’s emergency declaration put him at odds with other Republicans in the Kansas congressional delegation. Moran says he shares the president’s concerns about border security but opposes the way he’s pursuing money for a border wall. The senator says his concern about presidents bypassing Congress isn’t new.
Jerry Moran Audio
Moran and Kansas’ other U.S. Senator, Republican Pat Roberts voted for the funding bill that prevented another partial government shutdown. So did Democratic Congresswoman Sharice Davids.
But all three Kansas Republicans in the U.S. House – Roger Marshall, Steve Watkins and Ron Estes – opposed the bill – saying its lack of funding for the wall forced the president to declare an emergency.
Monday, California and 15 other states filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a statement Monday saying the suit alleges the Trump administration’s action violates the Constitution.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A 48-year-old man who allegedly stabbed a woman to death and stuffed her body into a trash can was ordered to stand trial for intentional second-degree murder.
Kidwell -photo Johnson Co.
Ronald Lee Kidwell is charged in the July 2018 death of 43-year-old MeShon Cooper, whose body was found at Kidwell’s home.
According to testimony, Kidwell told police he killed Cooper in a rage after she threatened to tell people he was HIV positive.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas will receive about $922,000 as its part of a national settlement with Walgreens concerning over-dispensing of insulin pens to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office said in a news release the settlement resolves allegations that Walgreens repeatedly dispensed more insulin than had been prescribed to patients. The company was accused of submitting false claims for reimbursement to Medicare and Medicaid.
Schmidt said Walgreens agreed to pay the U.S. and states $209.2 million, with $89.1 million going to state Medicaid programs. Kansas will receive $922,126, which will be used to reimburse federal and state funds spent by the Kansas Medicaid program, and to recover the cost of the investigation that led to the settlement.
Ronnie Joseph Schmidt was born November 17, 1944 in Hays, Kansas, youngest of three children born to George and Monica (Urban) Schmidt. He grew up in Pfeifer where his family farmed. They were members of the Holy Cross Catholic Church.
Ronnie served his country in the United States Army and Army National Guard. He was honorably discharged with the rank of Specialist E4 on December 12, 1969 after 5 and 1/2 years of service.
On September 16, 1967, Ronnie was united in marriage with Karen Vavra at St. Margaret Mary Church in Wichita, Kansas. This union was blessed with two sons: Nathan and Preston. The family made their home in Pfeifer, Kansas for many years before moving to Argonia, KS and later to their farm near Norwich, Kansas.
Ronnie retired from Farrar Inc. in Norwich where he worked many years as a machinist. He was skilled at mechanics and carpentry. He worked for Ellis County Highway Department when they lived in Pfeifer.
Ronnie was an avid hunter and fisherman and enjoyed spending time on his boat at many different lakes. Moving to the farm brought him great joy as he loved being in the quiet country. For many years he raised pheasant and quail. Some of his most favorite times were venturing back home to Pfeifer with his boys for weekend hunting and fishing getaways. He also made very tasty wines. Trips to Sokol Hall and card games were always exciting and interesting with family. He also never missed a chance at a good dance. Many great times were enjoyed at the Pfeifer Dance Hall.
On February 17, 2019, Ronnie passed away in Wichita, Kansas at the age of 74 years. He was preceded in death by his parents; brother, Milton; and sister, Elila Jean Butler.
Ronnie will be deeply missed by his wife of 51 years, Karen; sons: Nathan Schmidt and Preston Schmidt and wife, Joni; sisters-in-law, Alfreda Schmidt, Roberta Pryor and Julia Vavra; several nieces and nephews; other relatives and many friends.
Funeral service will be held 11:00 a.m. Friday, February 22, 2019 at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Pfeifer, Kansas. Visitation will be held from 10:00 a.m. to service. Burial will follow in Holy Cross Cemetery. Memorials in memory of Ronnie may be made to Holy Cross Charities.
Services are entrusted to Cline’s-Keithley Mortuary, 412 Main Street, Victoria, Kansas 67671. Condolences can be left by guestbook at www.keithleyfuneralchapels.com or can be sent via e-mail to [email protected].
