Former Wichita State star Cleanthony Early-photo NY Knicks
NEW YORK (AP) — A Brooklyn man has been charged in the robbery and shooting of former Wichita State star and current New York Knicks player Cleanthony Early outside a Queens strip club in December.
A complaint filed in federal court says 22-year-old Delvon Dowling was part of a group of masked men who staked out the club last December.
Documents say when Early exited the club and got into an Uber car the group approached the vehicle with guns drawn. Police say Early was ordered out of the car, shot in the right leg and robbed of necklaces, gold caps from his teeth and other items.
Authorities say Dowling was arrested Friday on unrelated charges and admitted to being part of the crew that robbed Early. He didn’t admit to being the gunman.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Topeka man convicted of kidnapping and repeatedly sexually attacking an 8-year-old girl has been refused a new trial.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports a Shawnee County judge last week rejected 30-year-old Jeremy James Lindsey’s push for a new trial. He’s to be sentenced April 21.
Lindsey’s two-week trial ended with his January convictions of three counts of rape and two of aggravated burglary. He also was found guilty of single counts of aggravated kidnapping, battery, child endangerment, felony criminal property damage and unlawful drug administration.
The victim disappeared from her home in September 2014 and was held captive, bound with a telephone cord, before freeing herself and seeking help from a nearby home.
Bourbon photo taken over the weekend courtesy Maries Co. Sherif
MARIES COUNTY, Mo. -Law enforcement authorities in Missouri have asked for help to locate former University of Kansas and Washburn running back Brandon Bourbon.
The 24-year-old Bourbon has been missing since April 2, 2016 from Washington County Missouri, according to a social media report.
Ping data from his cell phone last placed him in Maries County at 9:52 p.m. on Sunday.
Brandon is believed to be traveling in a silver, 2001 Chrysler Town & Country van.
The van has KU Stickers on the back windows and has some minor body damage on the rear end from an accident. Plates on the van are custom tags “JR-JENA”.
My friend Brandon Bourbon has been missing for 2 days with no communication with anyone. His phone turned off. This is not like Brandon.
Anyone with any information on the well being or location of Brandon Bourbon was asked to call Washington County Sheriff’s Office at 573-438-5478 or your local law enforcement.
Bourbon was originally recruited by Stanford but attended and played for the University of Kansas starting in 2011, according to his player bio. He suffered numerous injuries and finished his college football eligibility at Washburn in 2015.
SALINA -Five people were injured in an accident just before 9 p.m. on Monday in Saline County.
A 2015 Nissan Altima driven by Sandra Schmitt, 71 Salina, was stopped at a red light in the southbound lanes of 9th Street at the Belmont intersection, Salina Master Police Officer Rande Repp .
While stopped, Schmitt’s vehicle was rear-ended by a 2004 Jeep Cherokee driven by Alicia Dawn Ortiz, 31, Englewood, Colorado.
Schmitt , Ortiz, a passenger the Jeep Jeanann Corn, 48, Englewood, CO, and two passengers in the Nissan, ages 4 and 5, were all transported to Salina Regional Health Center with serious, but non-life threatening injuries, according to police.
Ortiz was cited for inattentive driving, according to police.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Police are investigating after they say a man was stabbed while trying to intervene in an altercation in Wichita.
Wichita police Lt. James Espinoza said that three people were with a teenager Sunday night, when one of them began arguing and accusing the teen of owing them money. Espinoza said a 42-year-old man tried to intervene and a fight ensued, during which he was stabbed in the back.
The Wichita Eagle reports the man was taken to a hospital and was in serious condition as of Monday afternoon.
According to Espinoza, police are looking for the three people as well as the teenager.
As Virgin America claimed the top spot for the fourth consecutive year, overall U.S. airline performance improved slightly in 2015, according to the 26th annual Airline Quality Rating (AQR), released Monday.
Industry performance improved slightly after a down year in 2014. Six of 13 U.S. airlines evaluated improved this past year, six declined and one airline (Spirit) was new to the ratings.
Overall, the airline industry collectively improved in three of the four core elements traced by the AQR study: on-time performance, rate of involuntary denied boardings, and the rate of mishandled baggage.
However, the rate of customer complaints increased to its highest level in 15 years, per passenger served.
Airlines that performed better in 2015 were JetBlue, Delta, ExpressJet, SkyWest, Southwest and United.
Those whose scores declined from 2014 were Alaska, American, Envoy, Frontier, Hawaiian and Virgin America.
Although Virgin America’s score declined slightly, it still retained the overall No. 1 ranking. JetBlue climbed two spots to finish a close second, followed by Delta, which maintained third place.
Unhappy air traveling public
Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University, says the better overall performance shows that the recent round of mergers is settling in and performance is reflecting this to customer benefit.
“Bigger has produced some operating gains for the airlines, but customer perceptions of poor outcomes are still reflected in a higher number of customer complaints for the year,” said Headley.
Study co-researcher Brent Bowen, dean of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Arizona, campus, agreed.
“These results clearly show that the air traveling public is not happy,” Bowen said “Passengers are reaching out and letting us know exactly that, based on the number of complaints filed with the Department of Transportation. The human element of air travel is obviously deteriorating, and passengers are fed up.”
The AQR score also reflects some of the complexities of an airline industry serving customers in a capacity-limited air travel system.
“When you look at the past 14 years, you find that the airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isn’t stressed by high passenger volume and high number of airplanes in the air,” said Headley. “With continued capacity limits and consolidation, one would hope that a less congested system would perform better. We began to see this again in 2015.
“The challenge is whether airline performance quality improvements at this level can be maintained as more people choose to fly. Does the infrastructure and air traffic control technology limit what the airlines can actually do?”
Bowen says the answer to that question and others like it will be sought by researchers and the flying public in the years to come.
“While these airlines are making record profits, the findings clearly indicate investments need to happen now to improve the customer experience in all of the complaint categories,” Bowen added. “Additionally, airports, communities and the government agencies must improve the capacity for air travel because there is no indication that air travel growth will slow down in the future.”
An electronic version of the full report, with details on each airline, is available at https://airlinequalityrating.com.
Inside this year’s rating
Below is the 2015 numerical ranking of the nation’s leading 13 airlines, according to the Airline Quality Rating, with the 2014 ranking in parentheses:
Virgin America (1)
JetBlue (4)
Delta (3)
Hawaiian (2)
Alaska (5)
Southwest (6)
SkyWest (10)
United (9)
ExpressJet (11)
American (7)
Frontier (8)
Envoy Air (12)
Spirit (new to rating in 2015)
On-time performance
Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance (88.4 percent) for 2015, and Spirit had the worst (69.0 percent).
Nine airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2015. Four of the 13 airlines rated had an on-time arrival percentage of better than 80 percent. On-time performance for the industry in 2015 was 79.9 percent, compared to 76.2 percent in 2014.
Involuntary denied boardings
JetBlue and Hawaiian are clearly the industry leaders in avoiding involuntary denied boarding incidents with a rate of 0.02 and 0.03 per 10,000 passengers, respectively. Envoy (2.35), ExpressJet (1.86) and SkyWest (1.78) had the highest involuntary denied boarding rates per 10,000 passengers.
Nine airlines improved their denied boardings rate in 2015. SkyWest recorded the greatest improvement.
Overall, the industry had 0.76 denied boardings per 10,000 passengers in 2015, compared to 0.92 in 2014.
Baggage handling
Virgin America had the best baggage handling rate (0.84 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers) of all airlines, and Envoy Air had the worst baggage handling rate (8.52 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers).
Eight airlines had improved mishandled baggage rates in 2015. The industry rate decreased from 3.62 per 1,000 passengers in 2014 to 3.24 in 2015.
Consumer complaints
Alaska had the lowest consumer complaint rate (0.50 per 100,000 passengers) of all airlines. Spirit had the highest consumer complaint rate (11.73 per 100,000 passengers).
Customer complaints per 100,000 passengers increased from 1.38 in 2014 to 1.90 in 2015. The majority of complaints (73 percent) to the Department of Transportation were for flight problems (36.1 percent), baggage (13.4 percent), reservations, ticketing and boarding (11.8 percent) and customer service (11.3 percent).
More about the Airline Quality Rating
As the nation’s longest running study of airline performance quality, the Airline Quality Rating (https://airlinequalityrating.com) sets the industry standard, providing consumers and industry watchers a means to compare performance quality among airlines using objective performance-based data.
No other study in the country is based on performance measures like the AQR. Criteria included in the report are screened to meet two basic elements: They must be readily obtainable from published data sources for each airline, and they must be important to consumers regarding airline quality. The resulting criteria include areas such as baggage handling, customer complaints, denied boardings and on-time arrivals.
The co-authors invite the flying public to participate in the Annual Passenger Survey at https://www.wichita.edu/aqrconsumersurvey.
The AQR is a joint research project funded as part of faculty research activities at Wichita State University (Wichita, Kansas) and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Arizona, campus.
Farmers Cooperative Elevator in Garden Plain- Google image
GARDEN PLAIN, Kan. (AP) — Shrinking farm incomes are putting pressure on Kansas farm co-ops to merge as a way to help producers cut their costs.
The Wichita Eagle reports that Farmers Cooperative Elevator in Garden Plain will vote in about six weeks on whether to merge with co-ops in Anthony and Kiowa. Andale Farmers Co-Op voted in December to merge with Kanza Co-op in the Pratt County town of Iuka.
Kansas State University professor Brian Briggeman says the number of co-ops in Kansas has fallen from about 350 in 1950, to about 80 today.
Kanza Co-op CEO Bruce Krehbiel says the latest round of mergers won’t be the last because bigger co-ops can increase efficiencies and lower costs.
Krehbiel says there are limits to the economies of scale, but those haven’t been reached.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo is repeatedly evading questions about whether he is mulling over a primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran.
Speculation has been fueled by an unusual and at times demeaning written statement Pompeo put out earlier Monday about his Kansas colleague’s shifting positions on whether the Supreme Court nominee should have a hearing.
Pompeo says he never comments on campaign activities they are engaged in.
He told The Associated Press he did not realize the political speculation his written statement had generated until contacted by media outlets.
Moran says in an email that he is not surprised Pompeo has suggested he is not running for the U.S. Senate. Moran says he wouldn’t have expected him to run against him without the courtesy of a conversation.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man has been sentenced to five years of probation in an investment fraud scheme.
Kansas Securities Commissioner Josh Ney announced in a news release Monday that 44-year-old Jeffrey Williams, of Wichita, pleaded guilty in Sedgwick County to charges that included felony securities fraud.
He was ordered to repay $55,150 in restitution. Williams also is barred from dealing in securities and financially advising clients.
Ney’s office said in a news release that Williams defrauded at least three Kansas investors out of thousands of dollars by selling what he purported to be interests in third-party life insurance contracts. But the release says Williams didn’t own the interests in the policies he sold to them.
Williams operated under the name Hybrid Asset Management.
HUTCHINSON — Clean up continues and US-50, just west of the South Hutchinson interchange, was expected to be open again by Monday night after a semi hauling a crane crashed into the overpass at Kansas 14 and Kansas 96 overpass.
The impact damaged two concrete girders and forced the closure of both lanes of U.S. 50 and the northbound lane of the bridge, according to Zach Oswald with the Kansas Department of Transportation.
Motorists going west on U.S. 50 were still able to use the interchange with Kansas 14 going south, but the eastbound entrance ramp was closed.
The impact with the bridge knocked the loader off of the semi trailer and scattered debris over all four lanes of the highway.
Oswald says there is no danger of the bridge collapsing, but crews are assessing the overall damage to the span.
RILEY COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Riley County are investigating a pair of weekend accidental shootings, according to a media release.
Just before 4p.m. on Sunday, it was reported to police that Kevin L. Worrell, 59, was manipulating a handgun at his residence in the 4200 Block of Kaw in Manhattan when it accidentally discharged.
The bullet struck his son Travis J. Worrell, 33, in the left leg, who was standing nearby.
Travis was transported to Via Christi Hospital in Manhattan and then later transferred to a medical center in Wichita.
His injuries are considered to be serious, but non life-threatening.
Just after 2:30 a.m., on Saturday, officers were dispatched to Via Christi Hospital for a report of an individual that had accidentally shot himself while manipulating a handgun in his residence in the 800 block of Ratone Street in Manhattan.
Police reported Matthew T. Collet, 29, accidentally shot himself in the hand as well as the leg. Collett’s injuries are considered to be non-life threatening.
