Calvin Candiff ( l ) with his Skydive partner Jason.
ABILENE-A Kansas man successfully completed his first parachute jump on Friday.
Calvin Canniff, 93, Junction City, completed his tandem jump with the help of the K-State Parachute Club of Abilene.
The senior minister at the First Christian Church in Junction City Ronnie Roberts helped arrange the tandem jump.
A tandem jump is a skydive attached to a partner.
Roberts traveled to Abilene where the skydive occurred. He noted Canniff brought several layers of clothing due to the cool weather conditions at the higher elevations.
He was given a little instruction and they loaded up in the airplane and took off.
Roberts was watching when Canniff landed after his jump.
“As we were watching the plane someone yelled and we looked off to the west of us, and there were all kinds of chutes and jumpers coming down,” said Roberts.
The last jumper was Calvin and his partner.
“They came down and just floated down, an easy drop. Several of the guys who arrived earlier received him. So it was a nice easy comedown, said Roberts.
Canniff was smiling and seemed to be glad to be back on earth, and that his biggest concern had been the cold during the jump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Kansas senator’s comments expressing support for Senate consideration of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick have angered conservatives and underscored the passion the issue stirs in both parties’ activists.
Republican Sen. Jerry Moran made the remarks at events in Kansas this week, days after Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the vacancy. They were reported by local newspapers and came to national attention days later.
According to reports in The Garden City Telegram and Dodge City Daily Globe, Moran said he favored Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and indicated an openness to a full Senate vote. He said it was extremely unlikely he’d back the nominee.
One conservative group, the Judicial Crisis Network, said “caving into” Obama was not serving Kansans.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Two men were charged in federal court Thursday for the armed robbery of a Walgreens in Blue Springs, Mo., which resulted in a third suspect being fatally shot by law enforcement officers, according to Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.
Shannon R. Thomas, 25, of Shawnee, Kan., and Deonte J. Collins-Abbott, 21, of Grandview, Mo., were charged in a federal criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo.
Today’s criminal complaint charges both Thomas and Collins-Abbott with the armed robbery of a Walgreens located at 9th and Duncan in Blue Springs. Thomas and Collins-Abbott are also charged with aiding and abetting each other to possess a firearm during a crime of violence.
According to an affidavit filed in support of today’s criminal complaint, law enforcement officers were conducting surveillance on Thomas and Collins-Abbott as part of an investigation into a series of 21 armed robberies of businesses in Independence, Mo., Raytown, Mo., North Kansas City, Mo., Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., since Jan. 2, 2016. In all of these robberies, the affidavit says, the suspects have consistently displayed handguns in a threatening manner and behaved in a violent and aggressive fashion physically toward their victims, including shooting one victim at the Conoco located at 4656 Prospect Ave., Kansas City, Mo., on March 15, 2016. The robberies appear to have been committed consistently by at least four suspects who appear in surveillance video in most of the incidents.
Law enforcement officers saw Collins-Abbott leave his apartment and travel to the apartment of Jermon Seals in Shawnee early this morning. When Collins-Abbott and Seals left the apartment, the affidavit says, they both appeared to be holding handguns and were dressed in all black clothing. They left in Seals’s 2001 BMW X5 SUV and eventually stopped to pick up Thomas.
At approximately 3:09 a.m., the affidavit says, they stopped at the Phillips 66 at 1005 N.W. Coronodo Dr., Blue Springs. They entered the business and quickly left. According to the affidavit, they had attempted to rob the business.
They then drove to the area of 9th and Duncan in Blue Springs. The affidavit says they left the vehicle and walked up to the Walgreens, where they confronted an employee outside the business and forced the employee inside at gunpoint. Once inside, one of the robbers placed a firearm to the back of the employee’s head and took money from the front register. The other two robbers went over the pharmacy counter and took prescription grade cough syrup at gunpoint from the pharmacist. They then exited the business.
Law enforcement officers confronted them as they were walking back to the vehicle, the affidavit says. They failed to comply with the officers’ commands, according to the affidavit, and turned towards the officers, pointing a gun in their direction. Officers returned fire and Seals was struck in the exchange. Collins-Abbott and Thomas were apprehended by officers after a short foot pursuit.
Dickinson cautioned that the charges contained in this complaint are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.
JEFFERSON COUNTY – A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just after 9p.m. on Friday in Jefferson County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2001 Ford Utility vehicle driven by Harry Stephen Russom III, 37, Manhattan, was southbound on U.S. 59 two miles south of Oskaloosa, when the front seat passenger Elizabeth Ann Russom, 36, Manhattan, jumped out of the vehicle.
Russom was transported to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
The driver was not injured and was wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the 1st Battalion, 108th Aviation, Kansas National Guard, will fly missions on Saturday, March 26, to support firefighting efforts in south central Kansas, according to a media release.
Each Black Hawk is manned by a 4-person crew, and will be equipped with a 660 gallon Bambi bucket, which can scoop water from local water sources to dump on the flames. In addition to the aircraft, the 108th is sending a fuel tanker truck and another ground support vehicle with 2 crewmembers each.
The Kansas Division of Emergency Management continues to monitor the grass fires and is coordinating resources. The State Emergency Operations Center in Topeka is activated at a 24-hour watch level.
Current estimates indicate approximately 300,000 acres have been burned. No injuries or fatalities have been reported as a result of the fires, but five homes have been destroyed along with multiple outbuildings and an unknown number of livestock have been lost. Two bridges in Barber County have also been reported destroyed.
Barber, Comanche, Harvey and Reno Counties have all issued state of local disaster emergency declarations and Gov. Sam Brownback signed a State of Disaster Emergency declaration March 23 for all affected counties. The state requested and was granted a federal Fire Management Assistance Grant for Barber and Comanche Counties.
Federal officials may halt Medicare funding to an Emporia hospital because a mental health patient was discharged too soon — an incident that hospital officials say resulted in part from a lack of mental health beds in Kansas.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services conducted a follow-up visit March 10 at Newman Regional Health to determine if it had corrected the lapse in procedure that led to a patient being improperly discharged in September. CMS has not made results of the follow-up visit public.
If the hospital has corrected the violation, it will continue to receive Medicare payments. Otherwise, it could lose those payments. Newman also could lose its Medicaid funding, as CMS requires the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to halt those payments when a facility is decertified.
An inspection report from CMS cited the case of a person, identified only as patient #1, who sought treatment Sept. 24, 2015, at Newman’s emergency department for chest pain and thoughts of suicide.
A staff member from the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas determined the patient qualified for inpatient mental health treatment, and a physician at Newman contacted three unidentified hospitals that provide inpatient psychiatric treatment to try to find a place for the patient, according to CMS. The three hospitals declined to take the patient because of a lack of space and because the chest pain could have indicated a cardiac condition.
Newman hospital staff conducted suicide checks on the patient until the next afternoon, when the patient was discharged with the understanding that a staff member from the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas would take the patient to one of the hospitals the Newman physician had contacted earlier. Staff told CMS the arrangement was unusual, because they didn’t fill out the typical paperwork for a transfer in this instance.
According to the report, a staff member from the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas told CMS the hospital where the patient was taken hadn’t been notified and didn’t have a bed available in its psychiatric unit. The report didn’t specify what happened to the patient after the botched transfer.
Federal law prohibits hospitals from discharging a patient with an unstable emergency medical condition, which would include signs of cardiac trouble or severe psychiatric problems. They can transfer an unstable patient to a facility capable of treating the patient if the benefits of treatment at a different facility outweigh the risks of the transfer.
A statement from Newman CEO Robert Wright said the hospital is taking steps to comply with CMS and will continue to treat Medicare patients. Decertification means that federal authorities won’t pay for care to Medicare patients but doesn’t forbid a hospital from providing care to those patients.
“We have fully cooperated with CMS and developed a plan of action,” Wright said in the statement, which was issued March 17.
In the statement, Wright noted a shortage of mental health beds and other mental health services, particularly in rural Kansas. He also cited an admissions moratorium at Osawatomie State Hospital during renovations under way due to CMS concerns about patient safety.
“As a result of a waiting list for inpatient psychiatric beds, which has persisted since at least June of last year in Kansas, many rural hospitals like ours are in the position of trying to care for mental health patients in emergency rooms and other inpatient and outpatient settings not intended for that purpose while waiting for the next available psychiatric bed,” Wright said in the statement.
Osawatomie, which is about 70 miles east of Emporia, is one of two state-run inpatient facilities for Kansans with severe or persistent mental illness. The other is in Larned.
Wright said the hospital has hired a consultant to assess its policies and clarified which psychiatric symptoms constitute an emergency medical condition that would prevent a person from being discharged. It also clarified how the mental health center and hospital should communicate and trained employees on discharge requirements.
The hospital declined to comment on its corrections beyond the statement.
Cindy Samuelson, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Hospital Association, said several hospitals have been affected by capacity problems in the state’s mental health system. She said officials at several member hospitals have reported that mental health patients are having to wait in their emergency departments — some for days — for an inpatient psychiatric bed to open.
She said she hadn’t heard of CMS investigating other hospitals for housing mental health patients in emergency departments, but that small hospitals with fewer resources have had more difficulty serving those patients.
Megan Hart is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach her on Twitter @meganhartMC
TOPEKA – Kansas lawmakers sent a school funding bill to Gov. Sam Brownback before they adjourned Thursday for a four-week break.
The House and Senate budget committees advanced their versions of a revised education budget Wednesday. The Senate passed the budget bill with a 32-5 vote, while the House approved the measure 93-31.
The revisions are in response to the Kansas Supreme Court’s February ruling on the current means and methods for equalization of funding to school districts. The court ruled the state’s plan to use block grants to fund schools was unconstitutional because of a requirement for poorer districts to impose higher property taxes in order to raise adequate funding.
Republican leaders in the Senate discussed using language that could arguably send a message to the Supreme Court. Members said the bill “fully complies with the Supreme Court’s order” for revision.
Sen. Laura Kelly, D–Topeka, who is on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said she doubted the court would appreciate the language.
“I certainly appreciate all the editorializing we put into the bill today. I’ve never seen that happen before,” Kelly told the committee Wednesday. “I do believe that this is cobbled together in the hopes that the court, which probably doesn’t want to shut the schools down either, will say this is good enough.”
In its February ruling, the court said if lawmakers do not have a sound budget by July 1, it would close public schools until lawmakers produce a constitutional budget for adequate education funding. July 1 is the first day of the next fiscal year.
MCPHERSON, Kan. (AP) — A McPherson County official says that a man has been rescued after being trapped for hours in a grain bin.
Emergency crews responded around 11:30 a.m. Friday to a report that a man in his 50s was trapped in a grain bin at a feed lot between Marquette and McPherson.
John Elmer, McPherson County’s Emergency Services director, said that man was with co-workers when he got trapped inside the bin.
Authorities say the man was conscious and talking with rescuers during the rescue. He has been taken to a hospital in Wichita.
TOPEKA–Governor Sam Brownback has issued a proclamation declaring the month of April as “Safe Digging Month” in Kansas. The proclamation, in concurrence with National Safe Digging Month, reminds Kansans to call 811 before starting any outdoor digging projects.
The Kansas Corporation Commission, Kansas One-Call, the Kansas Pipeline Association, the Common Ground Alliance, and Governor Brownback are encouraging excavators and homeowners to call 811 before they begin digging projects to prevent injuries, property damage, and inconvenient outages. A utility line is damaged by digging once every eight minutes nationwide, and one-third of those incidents are caused by failure of the professional excavator or homeowner to call 811 before digging.
When dialing 811, callers are connected to Kansas One-Call, which notifies the appropriate utility companies of the intent to dig. Calls are taken 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Requests can also be entered at www.kansasonecall.com. Excavators and homeowners are required to make a request at least two working days in advance of beginning a digging project. Professional locators are then sent to the requested digging site to mark the approximate locations of underground lines with flags or spray paint. Once lines have been accurately marked, digging can begin.
Every digging project, no matter how large or small, requires a call to 811. The depth of utility lines varies, and there may be multiple lines in a common area. Some utility lines are buried only a few inches below the surface, making them easy to strike during shallow digging projects. Installing a mailbox, landscaping, putting in a fence, and building a deck are all examples of digging projects that necessitate a call to 811 before starting.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Board of Regents has created a new tool that’ll help students and parents research the cost and return of degrees available at state universities.
The tool uses real graduates’ data to allow users to study statistics of 600 degrees with the typical costs to cover university fees as well as how former students paid the fees. The Kansas Department of Labor also provides wage information on the first five years of employment after earning each individual degree.
Regents spokeswoman Breeze Richardson, said that the program was built in response to a state Legislature request to require a “degree prospectus” to be published for every postsecondary degree program in Kansas.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Legislation in Kansas that would restrict how public schools and colleges accommodate transgender students is receiving national attention.
Under separate but identical bills before House and Senate committees, students would be able to collect monetary damages if someone was in what is deemed the wrong bathroom.
The bills are described as privacy protections for students and limit accommodations for transgender students. The measures say group bathrooms, locker rooms and showers must be limited to a single sex, and gender would be defined “by a person’s chromosomes.”
If transgender students were discovered using group facilities for their identified genders, other students present can sue the schools and colleges. The measures allow an award of $2,500 for each incident, along with other damages.
Critics call it a “bounty” on transgender students.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Islamic Society of Wichita has canceled a fundraising dinner because of a congressman’s objections and rumors an armed group of protesters planned to show up outside the organization’s buildings.
The Wichita Eagle reports U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Republican, questioned why the society invited Sheik Monzer Talib, who Pompeo says has ties to Hamas, to speak at the Friday event.
Islamic Society spokesman Hussam Madi apologized for any concern Talib’s planned participation might have caused.
Madi says the threat of heavily armed protesters was alarming and the society didn’t want to be the target of anything that might hurt its families or the neighboring Lutheran church.
Pompeo says he understands the society has a First Amendment right to invite Talib, but doing so would hurt the community.
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
