HUTCHINSON -The trial for a Kansas teen accused of the murder of his mother and sister continued Friday with the defense for Sam Vanochen calling their witnesses.
Vonachen is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and aggravated arson after allegedly setting a fire to his family’s home leaving his mother and sister trapped inside. He was 14 at the time of the fire September 26, 2013.
On Friday afternoon, Hutchinson Police Detective Scott Carlson was asked about phone records belonging to the defendant.
It was during that testimony that the defense opened the door for the state to bring in a photo downloaded by Vonachen to his phone the night of the murder, in fact just hours before he allegedly started the fire.
That image from “My Little Pony” which had a picture of the pony with the word murder repeated across the picture in different sizes.
Most of the rest of the defense witnesses called to the stand Friday were character witnesses including the defendant’s grandmother who testified that she never saw anything out of the ordinary and described the relationships among the family as normal.
Prior to the state resting, the defense was also able to call a number of teachers from the Buhler school district. They told the jury that he was quiet, but none indicated that they saw any substantial evidence that he was anti-social.
The state ended their case with Dr. Shelby Evans, a psychologist who also did an evaluation of the defendant and also agrees that he was capable forming intent to commit murder.
After the state rested, the defense asked for a judgment of acquittal, which was denied.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Garmin International says it is planning a $200 million expansion at its headquarters in Olathe.
Garmin and the city of Olathe announced Friday that the company will build a new manufacturing and distribution center and new road through its campus. The project is expected to take two years.
The Kansas City Star reports after the expansion is completed, the company plans to renovate its existing manufacturing and warehouse space for research, development and office space.
The company currently employs about 2,800 at its headquarters. The expansion will accommodate another 2,600 workers.
Company spokesman Ted Gartner says officials have not decided whether about 600 Garmin workers who work elsewhere in the Kansas City area will be moved to the expanded headquarters.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) Two Kansas City men have been charged with robbing a bank on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area.
The U.S. attorney’s office says 57-year-old Terry Lovelady and 42-year-old Chad English were charged Thursday in federal court.
Lovelady is accused in the criminal complaint of robbing a Leawood branch of the Central Bank of the Midwest on Wednesday. The complaint says English drove the getaway car during a chase that ended when the vehicle jumped a curb, rolled down a hill and came to a stop in a St. Joseph Medical Center parking lot.
The men face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.
No attorney is listed for Lovelady in online court records. English’s attorney didn’t immediately return an email message from The Associated Press.
DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. is seeking to forcibly limit how fast trucks, buses and other large vehicles can travel on the nation’s highways.
A new proposal Friday would impose the nationwide limit by electronically capping speeds with a device on newly made U.S. vehicles that weigh more than 26,000 pounds. Regulators are considering a cap of 60, 65 or 68 miles per hour, though that could change.
The government says capping speeds for large vehicles will reduce the 1,115 fatal crashes involving heavy trucks that occur each year.
The proposal offered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is subject to public comment before becoming final.
WICHITA – An inmate in the Sedgwick County Detention Facility was hospitalized briefly with a head injury after being attacked by another inmate on Thursday.
Shortly before 1 p.m. a 41 year old male inmate attacked a 38 year old male inmate, according to a media release.
A team of deputies responded and were able to control the situation.
As a result of the attack, the victim was hospitalized briefly with a head injury. The victim has since been returned to the detention facility and is being cared for in the clinic.
Sheriff’s detectives investigated the incident and presented the case to the District Attorney’s Office. The suspect in the case is being charged with aggravated battery according to a news release from the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office.
Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska established an agreement this week in the longstanding conflict over water from the Republican River basin, as the Republican River Compact Administration signed two resolutions, according to a media release from Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.
Representatives from the three states have been meeting monthly for over two years, in an effort to change the approach and improve how they manage interstate water matters. This effort has created a new focus on transparency and certainty as all three states work to serve their water users. The intent of these resolutions is to replace the need for annual reviews and instead provide long-term surety to water users.
“Signing these resolutions shows the commitment from all three states to engage in open and transparent dialogue for the past two years,” said Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. “This long-term agreement will ultimately improve water management for water users in Kansas as well as Nebraska and Colorado.”
The resolutions signed this week will provide flexibility and greater certainty to all water users in the region, while remaining consistent with the terms of the Republican River Compact and the Final Settlement Stipulation of 2002. The three states have been involved in various litigation and arbitrations for the past 15 years over administration of water in the Republican River basin, and this agreement is a significant and positive step forward, with the next steps focusing on working with the basin’s water users to implement these agreements.
“We are proud to be part of this historic agreement,” said Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. “For the first time since signing the Compact, the three states have worked together to resolve their issues without litigation and have brought certainty to the water users in the basin. This is how we do our best work in Colorado and defines our approach to addressing our water challenges — cooperation and collaboration.”
It has been a priority of the states to collaborate on interstate water matters to ensure each state’s water users are protected while also maintaining a positive working relationship between the compacting states. “These resolutions represent a long-term strategy for representing each state and ultimately improving water management for water users in all three states,” said Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts.
The Republican River basin begins in the plains of eastern Colorado and flows through northwest Kansas and southern Nebraska, ultimately returning to Kansas. The Republican River Compact was negotiated during the early 1940s with participation by the states of Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska and a representative of the President of the United States. The Compact was formally signed in 1942.
Its purposes are to provide for equitable division of such waters, remove all causes of controversy, promote interstate comity, promote joint action by the states and the United States in the efficient use of water and the control of destructive floods, and provide for the most efficient use of waters in the Republican River basin.
The state official in each of the three states who is charged with administering water law serves on the Republican River Compact Administration. For more information about the Compact, go to the following websites:
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a Pokemon Go player has crashed his car in southern Kansas while playing the mobile game.
KAKE-TV reports that the crash happened Thursday morning on Wichita State University’s campus in Maize. Maize police said the man has been playing Pokemon Go while driving when his car collided with a pole in a parking lot.
The man in his 20s received cuts and scrapes. His car had to be towed from the lot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration wants all U.S. blood banks to start screening for Zika virus, a major expansion intended to protect the nation’s blood supply from the mosquito-borne disease.
The new advisory means all U.S. states and territories will need to begin testing blood donations for Zika. Previously, the requirement was limited to areas with active Zika transmission, such as Puerto Rico and two Florida counties.
Blood banks already test donations for HIV, hepatitis, West Nile virus and other blood-borne viruses.
Last month, the FDA told blood centers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale to immediately stop collecting donations until they could begin screening each unit of blood for Zika. The order followed now-confirmed reports of local Zika transmission — the first in the continental U.S.
Accredited for blood centers in Kansas include
The University of Kansas Hospital Kansas City
Overland Park Regional Medical Center Overland Park
Irwin Army Community Hospital Ft. Riley
Stormont-Vail RHC Topeka
Via Christi Hospital St. Francis In Wichita
Via Christi Hospital St. Joseph In Wichita
Labette Health Parsons
Menorah Medical Center Overland Park
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A man who had alcohol in his system when he killed a family of five in a crash 30 years ago has been charged with driving under the influence.
Shawnee County sheriff’s Sgt. Todd Stallbaumer says deputies spotted 52-year-old Daryl Goodnow, of Meriden, attempting to drive a pickup truck Wednesday with a light pole lodged underneath. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Goodnow was transported to the Shawnee County Jail and has been released on bond.
Goodnow was 21 in 1986 when the truck he was driving crossed the center line of U.S. 75 and collided head-on with a sport utility vehicle. The crash killed a rural Mayetta couple and three children.
Goodnow was released on parole in 1991 but violated it with a 1995 DUI arrest in Topeka.
Photo by Andy Marso/KHI News Service Mike Zegunis, football coach at Blue Valley Northwest High School, addresses his team during a recent practice at the Overland Park school. Kansas high schools are starting the second year under new rules that limit full-contact football practice. Players aren’t allowed to go all-out until the fifth practice. Once games start, full-contact practices are limited to an hour and a half, and contact isn’t allowed the day after games. –
BY ANDY MARSO
Familiar sounds filled the air at Blue Valley Northwest High School’s first football practice of the year.
Rock music playing over the sound system. Whistles blaring. Coaches yelling instructions.
But one sound wasn’t present: helmets colliding.
That’s because the Kansas State High School Athletic Association, or KSHSAA, approved new rules last year limiting full-contact football practice.
Players aren’t allowed to go all-out until the fifth practice. Once games start, full-contact practices are limited to an hour and a half, and contact isn’t allowed the day after games.
The new rules — formed with help from the National Federation of State High School Associations Concussion Summit Task Force — are meant to reduce players’ head injuries and brain trauma that have parents increasingly asking whether football is right for their kids.
Not everyone is a fan.
“I personally don’t like the limited contact setting because you’re not allowed to go 100 percent, basically, and I just can’t play football like that,” said Garret Tierney, a senior running back and linebacker at Blue Valley Northwest in Overland Park.
But Tierney said his mom and grandparents are concerned about the connection between football and head injuries.
Tierney doesn’t think he’s ever had a concussion. But concussions aren’t the only worry when it comes to football.
Researchers at Boston University have studied the brains of people who played football at several levels — high school, college and pro — and found some indication of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease, at all levels.
One of the brains came from Zack Langston, who about 10 years ago was a hard-hitting linebacker at Blue Valley Northwest who would go on to play at Pittsburg State University.
Langston fatally shot himself in the chest in 2014 after years of battling mood swings and rage characteristic of severe CTE. He was 26.
Acute concussions are the most obvious types of brain injury. But CTE like Langston had builds slowly, over time, and so far can only be diagnosed after death. That makes it hard for high school players, and their parents, to know exactly what risks they’re facing.
NFL kick returner and wide receiver Josh Cribbs held a room full of reporters riveted when he spoke as part of a panel discussion about head trauma at the April conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists.
Josh Cribbs, left, an NFL kick returner and wide receiver, spoke as part of a panel discussion about head trauma earlier this year at a conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists. Cribbs talked about gaming the NFL’s concussion tests to stay on the field, even after he’d been hit so hard he blacked out temporarily. CREDIT ANDY MARSO / HEARTLAND HEALTH MONITOR
Cribbs talked about gaming the NFL’s concussion tests to stay on the field, even after he’d been hit so hard he blacked out temporarily. He talked about being knocked out for multiple commercial breaks, then coming to and looking to the scoreboard to see who his team was playing.
Steve Sanders, a former NFL player and friend of Cribbs who also was on the panel, shook his head.
“Even though I’m hearing this for probably the 10th time, I’m sitting here like ‘Wow,’” Sanders said.
Cribbs said a neurology specialist told him he has “unspecific change in my white brain matter,” but neither the specialist nor anyone else could tell if it’s the buildup of tau protein that causes CTE.
“I had a brain MRI and CAT scan and everything recently with the clinic, and I had my doctor tell me I have a healthy brain for a person in their late 50s,” Cribbs said. “I’m 32 years old.”
But Cribbs has played a decade in the NFL, following four years at Kent State University.
How much risk he would have faced if his football career ended after high school is hard to evaluate.
Charles Bernick, associate medical director for the Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, said during the panel discussion that there’s scant research on CTE among student-athletes.
“There’s just not a lot on that,” he said, “and that’s why in these decisions and discussions of youth football, we don’t have a lot of hard facts to guide that or to absolutely say, you know, it’s dangerous.”
Bernick said the number of blows to the head is the biggest contributing factor for CTE, but other factors likely are at play as well: genetics, lifestyle, environment. Two people who get hit the same number of times aren’t likely to react the same way.
“We know trauma is necessary, but we don’t know the other risk factors,” Bernick said. “We don’t have any consensus in the diagnosis of CTE, and we don’t have any way to really diagnose it in imaging at the moment. All these things people are working on, but you have to understand at this level there’s a lot of unknowns in work on CTE.”
Other sports also carry risks
More research on head trauma is underway at places like Boston University, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.
Since 2011, Bernick has been studying the brain function of athletes — not just football players, but boxers and mixed martial arts fighters as well.
He said CTE has affected hockey players, while veterans of recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who survived blast injuries also could be susceptible.
Former pro soccer player Brandi Chastain has agreed to donate her brain for research after death, providing more insight into studies that thus far have focused almost exclusively on the brains of male athletes.
KSHSAA officials like Brent Unruh, a certified athletic trainer who is the association’s sports medicine liaison, said the focus on football shouldn’t obscure the fact that all sports carry some risk of head injury.
“Girls’ soccer this past year actually has their overall concussion rate the same or even a little higher than football,” Unruh said, citing data collected by athletic trainers nationwide. “It’s the first time that it’s reached that level. So it’s definitely not just football.”
Still, football has taken the brunt of CTE awareness, with youth participation numbers dropping for several years before a slight rebound last year.
The head football coach at Blue Valley Northwest, Mike Zegunis, said he thinks the sport has not received enough credit for safety improvements, whether it’s the new contact limits or coaching that emphasizes proper blocking and tackling techniques.
“There’s so much good that can come from kids playing football, I think it would be a tragedy if we started losing more and more people because of what the game of football can do for teaching boys to become men,” said Zegunis, who’s entering his 12th year coaching the Huskies.
Mark Lentz, KSHSAA assistant executive director, said the contact limitation rules are in place so kids can enjoy the benefits with fewer risks.
“We’re not guaranteeing that someone’s not going to get a concussion, which no one can do,” Lentz said. “But we’re minimizing the risk. … Does this mean it’s the perfect system? I don’t know. But is it something we believe that can be built upon? Absolutely.”
Andy Marso is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach him on Twitter @andymarso
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas motel owner who nearly stabbed his wife to death last summer has been sentenced to probation, in part because of the cultural ramifications his incarceration would have had on his family.
An attorney for 46-year-old Navinkumar Patel told Shawnee County District Judge Robert Fairchild on Thursday that in the Hindu culture of Patel’s family, his wife and children would essentially be “ostracized” if he were sent to prison.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports Patel pleaded no-contest in March to attempted second-degree murder and criminal threat for stabbing his wife in the abdomen at the Super 8 he owns in Lawrence.
A doctor testified that Patel suffers from bipolar disorder, which was made worse by alcohol addiction.
SALINE COUNTY- Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating an early Friday morning robbery and searching for two suspects.
Just after 1 a.m. on Friday, A 28-year-old male employee at Burger King, 316 E. Iron, was in the process of closing the business for the night, when two individuals were able to get inside the restaurant according to Police Captain Mike Sweeney.
The two suspects, one male and one female, battered the clerk and demanded money.
They received an undisclosed amount of cash before leaving the restaurant.
Sweeney said the male suspect was about 5’8″ and the female was also about 5’8″ with a husky build.
They were wearing dark, long sleeve clothing with some type of mask covering their faces. The clerk was not able to provide any further description.
Anyone with information pertaining to this robbery is asked to call the Salina Police Department at 785-826-7210 or Salina/Saline County Crime Stoppers at 785-825-TIPS.
PARIS (AP) — Apple issued a security update on Thursday after powerful espionage software was found targeting an activist’s iPhone in the Middle East. Apple said in a statement that it fixed the vulnerability immediately after learning about it.
Computer forensics experts tell The Associated Press the spyware takes advantage of three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple’s mobile operating system to take complete control of iPhone handsets.
Two reports published Thursday by the San Francisco-based Lookout and internet watchdog group Citizen Lab outline how the spyware could compromise an iPhone or iPad with the tap of a finger, a trick so coveted in the world of cyberespionage that one spyware broker said last year that it had paid a $1 million dollar bounty to programmers who’d found a way to do it.
