SALINE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating a woman in connection with a November home burglary.
Barbara Bihl, 45, Salina, was arrested on a warrant Wednesday on charges of aggravated burglary and theft, according to Salina Police.
She is alleged to have entered a home in the 1100 block of North 5th Street on November 23, and stole nearly $500 dollars in household items.
Bihl is a an acquaintance of homeowner.
TOPEKA -Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is describing the state Supreme Court as an activist court for threatening to shut down public schools if legislators don’t write a new school funding law.
Brownback was responding to the court’s ruling Thursday striking down a school funding law enacted last year. The court said the law was unfair to poor districts and shorted their state aid by at least $54 million.
The court declared that schools will shut down if a new law isn’t enacted by the end of June.
Here are other reactions to the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday that a law enacted last year as a temporary education funding fix hurts poor districts:
“I think the decision is a good thing for schools across the state of Kansas. The Kansas constitution demands that schools be funded adequately and equitably. This decision affirms the constitutional demand for equity. … This is something fundamental for education in the state, so I think kids everywhere should be celebrating.” __ David Smith, a spokesman for the Kansas City, Kansas, district, which is a plaintiff in the legislation.
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“They should find a way to equitability distribute the money they are spending. In our opinion, schools have plenty of money.” __ David Trabert, president of the Kansas Policy Institute, a conservative think tank influential with GOP legislators.
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“It all comes back to the fact that districts have very differing abilities to raise revenue to fund schools because of differences in property valuation, and the court is simply saying, ‘You cannot allow those differences to exist in a way that could affect the quality of education in these different districts.’ In that sense, that has always been a key principal we have supported, and hopefully the Legislature will be able to quickly respond to this.” __ Mark Tallman, the lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards.
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“It looks like it’s politically motivated because of timing, in my opinion and the courts have now interjected themselves in the business of the people and the business of the Legislature. … I just think it’s poor timing. It looks fishy.” __ Kansas House Speaker Ray Merrick, a Stillwell Republican.
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“It’s not a surprise. We are happy it is headed in that direction, although the fear still is, with the tone of the legislature and the governor, we just wait to see what the next ploy will be to defy what the Supreme Court says.” __ Dean Katt, superintendent of the Hays school district.
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“It’s essentially a temper tantrum by the courts to push their political will on the Legislature. It’s kind of one of those things, ‘Give us the money or the kid gets it.'” __ State Sen. Jeff Melcher, a Leawood Republican.
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“Once again, the Kansas Supreme Court has protected our communities, families and the individual rights of our children guaranteed in the Kansas Constitution.” __ Ryan Wright, executive director of Kansans For Fair Courts.
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“As officials evaluate implications regarding the opinion, we will continue to advocate for a funding solution that is financially sustainable, promotes greater local funding flexibility, and ensures educational excellence for all students in Kansas.” __ Shawnee Mission school district’s written statement.
FINNEY COUNTY- Law enforcement authorities in Finney County are investigating an injury accident on Wednesday involving a semi, a passenger car and drugs.
The Garden City Police Department reported a Ford Focus driven by Luke Kobilan, 35, Colorado Springs, was southbound on the off ramp from U.S. 83 and failed to stop at the red light before turning left onto Mary Street.
The Ford was hit by a semi driven by Derrick Colter, 27, Kismet, that
was traveling north on U.S. 83 Fontage Road.
The semi struck the car on the passenger side pinning Matthew Kobilan, 29, Colorado Springs, in the vehicle.
He had to be extricated from the vehicle by Garden City Fire andRescue and EMS.
Officers responding to the accident noticed a strong odor of suspected marijuana emitting from the vehicle.
A search of the vehicle revealed several grams of suspected marijuana; Marijuana infused pain relief cream, drug paraphernalia, and a pint jar full of marijuana liquid.
The investigation revealed Luke Kobilan, Abraham Kobilan, 38, and Matthew Kobilan, 29 were passing through Garden City from Colorado Springs headed to Memphis Tennessee.
All three in the Ford Focus were transported to St. Catherine Hospital by EMS for injuries. Luke and Abraham were treated and released for minor injuries; Matthew was flown to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Denver Colorado for severe injuries.
Derrick Colter was not injured.
Matthew Kobilan was cited and released for Possession of Marijuana and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.
Luke Kobilan was arrested and is being held in the Finney County Jail on the requested charges of Aggravated Battery, Reckless Driving, Driving Under the Influence of Drugs, Possession of a Hallucinogenic, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.
Abraham Kobilan was arrested and is being held in the Finney County Jail on the requested charges of Possession of a Hallucinogenic, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia
SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A federal agency has fined a food preparation company more than $170,000 because of worker injuries that included two amputations at its Salina facility.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Thursday in a release it has fined Schwan’s Global Supply Chain $172,000 for violations found after accidents last year at its Salina processing facility.
OSHA says a worker had her right hand amputated after her glove became caught in a conveyor assembly, and another worker lost a finger after coming into contact with a conveyor. A third person was burned in a separate incident.
Schwan’s said in an emailed statement that the company is committed to ensuring the safety of its employees and contractors and that it’s using the information from OSHA to improve processes.
ELLSWORTH COUNTY- Law enforcement authorities in Ellsworth County are investigation a case of hazing involving high school students from Great Bend.
The Great Bend activities bus was in Ellsworth County when the incident happened on Saturday, February 6, according to Ellsworth County Sheriff Tracy Ploutz.
The students were returning from Manhattan after participating in the Manhattan Invitational for swimming.
Ploutz says the situation went beyond hazing.
“I use the term hazing but it was pranks that got out of hand and turned into something worse,” said Ploutz.
An Ellsworth Deputy received a call from the Great Bend Police Department on Saturday. The GBPD notified the deputy the incident happened in Ellsworth County and sent the Sheriff’s Office a copy of their report.
Ploutz says his office received the report Tuesday morning and began talking with the students involved Wednesday afternoon.
“With what information we’ve gathered we are looking at three or four victims and four or five possible suspects, he said.
Ploutz also added he has a hard time labeling the incident as a fight considering how one-sided the incident was. Several victims may been assaulted on the Great Bend bus.
Ploutz says his department is still gathering information and will eventually forward the case to the Ellsworth County Attorney.
By Allison Kite
Kansas lawmakers are considering expanding prohibitions on schools using seclusion and restraint as punishment.
Advocates for students with developmental disabilities have called for such prohibitions for years, and last session the Legislature passed House Bill 2170 to limit seclusion and restraint.
But Tori Donahue told the House Children and Seniors Committee during a hearing this week that her son’s school district confined him in a small room by using an exemption in the law that allows emergency seclusion and restraint for students who present an immediate danger of physical harm.
“Society justifies it by instilling fear, using trigger words such as ‘safety’ and ‘danger’ to describe these individuals — which became commonly used after the passing of HB 2170,” she said.
Donahue supports a new proposal, House Bill 2534, which would require the schools to contact parents the same day an emergency seclusion or restraint is used and allow them to request a meeting with school officials to discuss it within 10 days.
HB 2534, which comes from a task force’s recommendations, also would prohibit chemical and mechanical restraint. Chemical restraint is the use of medication to restrain a child’s behavior, and mechanical restraint is the use of a device or object, including handcuffs, to restrict a child’s behavior.
Except in a case where the child could cause harm to others, educators would not be able to use emergency safety interventions on children with medical conditions that could put them in danger of mental or physical harm. Several parents of children with special needs testified in support of HB 2534, including Aldona Carney.
She said her son Neil, who has severe autism, was placed in seclusion without her knowledge when he was younger. One day, she said, she paid an unannounced visit to his school and was told he had been placed in seclusion for aggression toward staff. When she was taken to the room, which she said was no larger than a closet, she could hear Neil screaming.
She asked staff to open the door, and Neil was naked and had urinated on the floor.
“Sadly, I have no idea how many times Neil was put into the seclusion room prior to this incident because we were never notified by the school,” she said.
Donahue’s son Drake moved from the Blue Valley school district to Olathe last year. S
he said he had a behavior plan in Blue Valley and had never been subject to seclusion, but in Olathe he was. A room she estimated to be 4-feet by 5-feet adjacent to his classroom served as the “safe room.” “The district calls it a safe room, but I’m going to call it what it is. It’s a prison cell,” she said.
Some members of the Emergency Safety Intervention Task Force testified against the bill or stood neutral because it didn’t include all of the task force’s recommendations.
The task force was established when the original law passed last year and provided input for the drafting of HB 2534. The committee plans another hearing on HB 2534 at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
Allison Kite is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
HUTCHINSON -A Hutchinson Correctional Facility inmate facing trial for attempted capital murder waived his jury trial, then entered a plea as charged and was sentenced all during the same hearing on Thursday.
Forty-three-year-old Corey Jeffery entered a plea for the September 2014 stabbing of a correction’s office.
The officer, Tim Russell, who was working in the C-2 cell house at the central unit, received multiple stab wounds and was transported to the Hutchinson Regional Medical Center by EMS for treatment.
Russell had testified at the preliminary hearing that he had met with Jeffery before the incident and Jeffery was upset because of issues over his toilet.
Russell apparently went about his business, but then later called to get someone to come look at his toilet.
About an hour later, he says he was letting inmates out of their cell so they could visit the canteen and that’s when the attack occurred.
He told the court that he was stabbed at least 13 times.
Jeffrey was sentenced to life in prison and won’t be eligible for parole for over 54-years.
This sentence runs consecutive to his current sentence, which is also life, according to Judge Trish Rose.
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge in Massachusetts has delayed the sentencing of an 80-year-old man who admitted running a sprawling multistate marijuana-dealing operation.
Marshall Dion was scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, but U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston put off the hearing until March 10 because she wanted prosecutors and Dion’s lawyer to submit sentencing briefs.
Dion’s lawyer, Hank Brennan, says the judge wants to know why the proposed sentence in Dion’s plea agreement is up to seven years in prison when federal sentencing guidelines call for 30 years.
A stop for speeding in 2013 in Junction City, Kansas, led authorities to Massachusetts and Arizona, where they found about $15 million in cash, nearly 400 pounds of marijuana and ledgers detailing drug deals going back to 1992.
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BOSTON (AP) — An 80-year-old man who admitted running a sprawling multistate marijuana-dealing operation faces sentencing in federal court in Massachusetts.
Marshall Dion faces up to seven years in prison under a plea agreement with prosecutors who say he has been selling marijuana for decades.
In 1985, Dion crashed a single-engine plane in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, and then crawled along a field with two broken ankles as cash floated in the air. He denied that the $112,000 recovered from the crash scene was his.
A stop for speeding in 2013 in Junction City led authorities to Massachusetts and Arizona, where they found about $15 million in cash, nearly 400 pounds of marijuana and ledgers detailing drug deals going back to 1992.
Sentencing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Boston.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on the Kansas Supreme Court decision to toss the state’s stopgap school funding law (all times local):
12:30
Two Republican lawmakers are accusing the Kansas Supreme Court of trying to hold taxpayers and schoolchildren hostage with a ruling striking down an education funding law.
House Speaker Ray Merrick of Stillwell and state Sen. Jeff Melcher of Leawood decried the court’s ruling Thursday.
The court said the school funding law was unfair to poor districts and shorted their annual aid at least $54 million. The justices said if lawmakers don’t rewrite the law by June 30, the state’s schools must shut down.
Melcher called the decision “a temper tantrum.”
He said, “It’s kind of one of those things, ‘Give us the money, or the kid gets it.'”
Merrick told reporters that the timing of the ruling was fishy. It came just before the House voted on budget legislation.
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11:45 a.m.
A Democratic lawmaker has failed to delay a vote in the Kansas House on budget legislation following a Kansas Supreme Court decision invalidating a school funding law.
Rep. Jim Ward of Wichita said the House should have delayed the vote on the budget bill to allow legislators to react to the ruling. The Supreme Court said the law shorted poor school districts on their annual state aid by at least $54 million.
But the House voted 95-27 against his request to delay the vote.
It then passed the budget bill 68-56, sending it to the Senate.
The measure makes dozens of changes in the state’s $16.1 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 to eliminate a deficit projected at nearly $200 million.
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10:50 a.m.
The leader of a conservative Kansas think tank and an attorney representing four school districts that sued the state disagree over the effects of Thursday’s Kansas Supreme Court ruling on education funding.
The court invalidated a school funding law enacted last year, saying it violated the Kansas Constitution and was unfair to poor school districts. The court said the law left poor districts $54 million short in their aid for the 2014-15 school year.
Dave Trabert is president of the influential and conservative Kansas Policy Institute. He says the ruling means the state can find a fairer way to distribute more than $4 billion a year in aid without increasing its overall spending.
But attorney John Robb, who’s representing the districts suing the state, says the court specifically said that shifting aid around isn’t sufficient.
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10:15 a.m.
A Kansas Supreme Court ruling striking down the state’s law for funding its public schools says those schools won’t be able to open in the fall if legislators don’t write a new statute.
The high court’s ruling Thursday gave legislators until June 30 to enact a new law for distributing more than $4 billion a year in aid to the state’s 286 local school districts.
The justices said the law enacted last year is unfair to poor school districts and left them $54 million short in aid for the 2014-15 school year.
The court said in its unsigned opinion: “Without a constitutionally equitable school finance system, the schools in Kansas will be unable to operate beyond June 30.”
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10 a.m.
The Kansas Supreme Court has struck down a stopgap law for funding the state’s public schools, saying it left poor districts $54 million short.
The justices ruled Thursday that the Republican-backed law enacted last year doesn’t comply with the Kansas Constitution. The court gave lawmakers until the end of June to write a new law.
The ruling came in a lawsuit that four districts have been pursuing since 2010. The Supreme Court has yet to decide on the larger question of whether Kansas must boost its education spending by at least $548 million a year.
Lawmakers approved the 2015 law as temporary fix. The law replaced a per-student formula for distributing more than $4 billion a year to school in favor of stable “block grants.”
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranians started nationwide celebrations Thursday to commemorate the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that ousted a pro-Western monarchy and brought Islamists to power.
State television aired footage of rallies in Tehran and other cities and towns across the country, many of them in frigid winter weather conditions.
The demonstrators chanted traditional slogans against the U.S. and Israel, and the streets in many cities were decorated with anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli banners and posters.
Scene of capturing #US sailors recreated in the rally for anniversary of #Iran‘s revolution in #Tehran. pic.twitter.com/nomRF5PNEl
— Abas Aslani (@abasinfo) February 11, 2016
Some protestors made a point of taunting the United States. At one rally, a group of demonstrators reconstructed a scene from last month of 10 American sailors kneeling in Iranian custody. The sailors were captured after two of their boats mistakenly entered Iranian territorial waters; they were released the next day.
#Iran state TV publishes new pictures of #US sailors in which one sailor is crying after being detained. pic.twitter.com/Kl0WkN3QFG — Abas Aslani (@abasinfo) February 10, 2016
Authorities also displayed an array of weaponry and military hardware, including the Emad long-range ballistic surface-to-surface missile and a version of the Shahed drone which flew over a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf last month.
The rallies commemorate Feb. 11, 1979, when followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ousted U.S.-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi. The United States helped orchestrate the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, which brought Pahlavi to power and set the stage for decades of mistrust between the countries.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The estate of a University of Kansas graduate who helped develop the atomic bomb has donated $1.8 million to establish a new professorship in physics.
The Lawrence Journal World reports that the KU Endowment announced Wednesday that the gift comes from Ernest Klema and his late wife Virginia Klema, who also was a scientist. He died in 2008, and she died in 2015.
Ernest Klema earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the university in the early 1940s before beginning work on his doctorate at Princeton University. Ultimately, his project was transferred to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where he worked on the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb.
He later worked at several universities and labs before becoming a professor and dean of engineering at Tufts University.
STAFFORD -Fire investigators are working to determine the cause of a fire at a home Wednesday morning in Stafford.
The volunteer fire department brought the fire in a house at 415 South Keystone under control quickly.
It is possible the home will be considered a total loss, according to a report from the Stafford County Emergency Management.
The State Fire Marshal’s office has been asked to participate in the investigation.
A woman was in the home at the time the fire started. No injuries were reported. The family lost two small pets in the fire, according to Fire Chief Jerry Sanders.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Two Kansas City brothers have been ordered to stand trial in the death of an aspiring rapper from suburban Olathe.
The Kansas City Star reports that a Johnson County judge found sufficient evidence Wednesday to try 34-year-old Dale Willis and 28-year-old James Willis on a first-degree murder charge.
They are accused in the fatal September shooting of 24-year-old Jurl L. Carter outside of a bar in northern Overland Park. Carter performed under the names Boogy and Yunglyfe Carter.
During the preliminary hearing, several witnesses testified that they saw Dale Willis punch Carter in the face and knock him to the ground. Witnesses said that Carter was shot as he attempted to drive away.
