KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police in Kansas City, Missouri, are investigating four recent deaths as homicides, including the shooting of a woman riding in a vehicle.
Police said 25-year-old Ki’essence Pelton was pronounced dead at a hospital early Sunday morning. They said the driver of the vehicle in which she was riding took her there after realizing she had been shot.
The Kansas City Star reports that her death was part of a violent Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Police found 30-year-old local rapper Mack Jones’ body on Saturday morning in a parked vehicle, days after he was reported missing.
Also, the body of 30-year-old Gregory Payton Jr. of Kansas City, Kansas, was found in parked vehicle the same morning.
And 48-year-old Lynn Armstrong’s body was found inside an apartment Friday morning.
Teterville, Kansas was a small community which formed near the Teter Oil Fields in southeast Kansas in the 1920s. The community was named for James Teter who owned the land were the oil and homes were located.
Teter Rock was a pile of local rocks which James Teter erected at a high point on his land as a guidepost for homesteaders searching for the Cottonwood River. As Teterville grew, the rocks were used in the construction of several of the buildings and the Teter marker disappeared.
The Teterville community faded away as the Teter Oil Fields played out. Today a few foundations are the only part of Teterville which remains, but Teter Rock was reconstructed in 1954. A 16′ slab of rocks was erected in honor of Mr. Teter.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Investigators are working to determine what caused a fire that damaged a church in Kansas City, Kansas, and injured two firefighters.
The Kansas City Star reports the fire started early Sunday morning in the basement of the Wyandotte Tabernacle Church. It was reported shortly before 2 a.m.
When firefighters arrived, the church was engulfed in flames.
Assistant Fire Chie Morris Letcher says the roof partly collapsed and firefighters shifted into defensive mode. More crews were called in to help extinguish the blaze.
Two firefighters suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital for treatment.
WICHITA (AP) — A 7-year-old boy has died after an ATV crash in western Kansas.
The Wichita Eagle reports that the Kansas Highway Patrol says Kanon Michael Bowles of Syracuse died Saturday.
Investigators say Bowles was driving an ATV in Hamilton County when it began to spin off the road. Troopers say the ATV rotated multiple times over the driver’s side and Bowles was thrown from the vehicle.
Emergency crews took Bowles to Hamilton County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
WICHITA (AP) — A violent crime rate about twice the national average has prompted Wichita law enforcement officials to join a national program that aims to drive down crime.
The Wichita Eagle reports the city is among 10 selected this year to participate in the U.S. Department of Justice National Safety Partnership.
Wichita cited the latest figures published by the FBI and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in its application for the program, saying the city has experienced a “precipitous increase” in violent crime over the past three years.
Shootings have climbed steadily since 2014. Murders, rapes and aggravated assaults all ticked up between 2016 and 2018. And domestic violence “has risen sharply,” now accounting for nearly half of all aggravated assaults reported in the city.
“To make matters worse, Wichita PD is severely underfunded and understaffed,” with about 650 officers for a city that one study suggests should employ around 980, according to the application.
The partnership, a three-year program established in 2017, will provide training and technical assistance to the department at no cost. Wichita is among 40 participating cities total and 10 selected to join this year.
The rising crime rates have been fueled by drugs, gangs and domestic arguments. But the swell is a far cry from crime levels seen in the 1990s before a law enforcement crackdown on drugs, gangs and racketeering.
“Overall across the country crime is still continually going down. We’re seeing just a few spikes,” Wichita State University professor of criminal justice Michael Birzer said.
The Wichita Police Department has introduced a series of strategies it says are already working to counter the boost in violence, including hiring crime analysts, centralizing Violent Crimes Task Force members and asking gun dealers and owners to save spent ammunition so it is easier to identify firearms, especially stolen ones, used in crimes.
Nationwide there were an average of 382.9 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2017, according to FBI statistics. Wichita logged nearly three times that — 1,019 violent crimes for every 100,000 people — that same year.
Three of the four types of violent crimes tracked by the KBI and FBI ticked up from 2016 to 2018. Homicides, including police-involved killings, surged 37%; rape rose 25%; and aggravated assaults increased by 13%, according to the Wichita Police Department.
Shootings almost doubled between 2014 and 2018, to an average of nearly three a week. Meanwhile, aggravated assaults and batteries swelled to 3,015 incidents in 2017 — 76% of all violent crimes reported that year. That’s about eight a day on average.
“The reality is that there is a high level of gun violence,” Wichita police spokesman Officer Paul Cruz said. “And it’s an issue. But it’s a community-wide issue.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The national measles outbreak has not hit Kansas yet, but it has come close with cases reported in neighboring Oklahoma, Missouri and Colorado.
Kansas health officials say they think a case in Kansas looks nearly inevitable given that more than 1,000 measles cases have been reported so far across the nation. Kansas is in a shrinking minority of states without cases.
KCUR-FM reports that the state’s annual survey of kindergartener vaccination rates suggests some counties do better than others at getting children their potentially life-saving shots. Though Kansas requires shots against illnesses such as measles, whooping cough and polio for school attendance, 15% of kindergartners last year weren’t up to date on those.
While measles gets all the headlines, other vaccine-preventable diseases such as pneumonia, cancer rarely raise the same alarms.
People can reduce their risks with two vaccines against bacterial pneumonia recommended for adults ages 65 and older. Bacterial pneumonia hospitalizes hundreds of thousands of Americans a year and kills tens of thousands.
Researchers estimate inoculation against the cancer-causing HPV virus would wipe out 80 percent of the tens of thousands of cancer cases it causes across the country each year. Most people pick up HPV at some point in their lives, though most clear it out of their bodies naturally without necessarily ever knowing.
The federal government estimates just half of Kansas teens get even the first dose of the two-to-three dose HPV vaccine. The same low rates apply to the state’s elderly and the recommended pneumonia immunizations.
Children who do not have insurance or have poor-quality insurance, as well as those on Medicaid, qualify for free vaccines against 16 diseases, including HPV and measles.
“Our struggle right now is really being able to know what the true vaccination rate is in any county,” said Phil Griffin, who heads immunization programs at the Kansas State Department of Health and Environment.
Kansas calculates rates among kindergartners annually with cooperation from a solid sampling of schools that provide more precise data than some of what the Centers for Disease Control publishes. The CDC rate calculations cover a wider range of shots and age groups.
But state health officials will gradually get a better picture of immunization rates across the state in coming years after lawmakers tightened rules for electronic vaccine records starting next year.
That will fill in some of the gaps for health providers who often don’t know which shots a new-to-them patient has yet to get. Doctors and pharmacists will gain more consistent access to vaccines given in Kansas.
Starting this fall, Kansas plans to phase in two more vaccine requirements (for hepatitis A and meningococcal ACWY) for school attendance. Inoculation rates for both would likely increase, though the hep A rates were already fairly strong because they’re already required for day care in Kansas.
The state recently hired an epidemiologist to dig into vaccine rates across the state. It is seeking grants to support the effort and working with individual health providers to improve their practices.
Lawmakers also recently expanded vaccine access by letting pharmacists give more shots. That may particularly benefit teenagers who no longer visit their pediatricians as often and still lack a number of vaccines.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Medicaid support for people with brain injuries has been expanded to include those acquired through internal forces, such as strokes or tumors, following years of advocacy for change.
A quirk in Kansas’ Medicaid statute had meant the only patients to qualify were those with a traumatic brain injury from a blow to the head. But a bipartisan coalition of Kansas legislators approved changes to the law and, as of July 1, acquired brain injuries from events such as strokes, tumors and asthma attacks, are now included, the Kansas City Star reported.
The lawmakers also voted to expand services to children under 16, but that won’t go into effect until October, giving the state time to determine what services the youths need.
“We got so many calls for people that were not eligible,” said Heather Matty, who works at the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Greater Kansas City. “It was a sad reality. I’m just very thankful that they finally were able to get this changed and they finally came to an agreement, because it’s taken a long time to get this done. And it’s going to help a lot of people.”
Janet Williams is the founder of Minds Matter in Overland Park, the state’s largest provider of services to people with brain injuries. She noted that Kansas was the first state, in 1986, to establish a Medicaid “waiver” specifically to allow brain injury victims to get all the same therapy services at home that they can receive in an institution.
From the start, though, lawmakers have restricted it to people with traumatic brain injuries because they were concerned about the cost of offering it to everyone with brain damage.
“They were afraid of the numbers and it was supposed to be like a trial to see if it worked, and then every time we came back to get the definition changed, they’d bring up the fear of numbers,” Williams said.
Expansion advocates such as Williams asserted that offering those services can save Kansas money in the long term if it encourages self-sufficiency.
TOPEKA (AP) — The former top administrator of Kansas’ juvenile correctional facility accused of grabbing and shoving a female worker has pleaded no-contest to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Kyle Rohr entered the plea Friday in Shawnee County District Court to bring an end to the criminal case. He had been found guilty last year of battery by a municipal court, but appealed to the district court for a jury trial. That trial has been set to begin Monday.
Rohr was effectively fired last year following the municipal conviction. Rohr was accused of twice grabbing Michelle Valdivia in 2017 at the Topeka juvenile complex and shoving her into a cubicle. Rohr reportedly was upset with the planning of a holiday event for incarcerated juveniles.
Valdivia is suing Rohr, the Kansas Department of Corrections and the state of Kansas for an undisclosed amount, saying Rohr was inadequately supervised.
Luc Bensimon was one of four transgender individuals who sued Kansas officials over the state’s refusal to allow them to change the sex listed on their birth certificates.
By DAN MARGOLIES Kansas News Service
Kansas has agreed to change its policy and allow transgender people born in the state to update the sex listed on their birth certificates.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment on Friday entered into a consent decree that ends a lawsuit brought by four native Kansans and the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project, Inc. (K-STEP).
The policy change is significant because birth certificates can determine access to education, employment, health care, travel and the ability to obtain other identification documents.
“It actually will affect the day-to-day lives of every transgender person born in Kansas,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior attorney at Lambda Legal, which represented the plaintiffs. “It means that the state will finally recognize transgender people for who they are and respect that identity.”
Until now, Kansas was one of only three states that didn’t allow people to change their birth certificates to reflect a gender identity that differs from the one they were assigned at birth.
Federal courts have struck down similar policies in Idaho and Puerto Rico, leaving only Ohio and Tennessee with such policies.
The plaintiffs in the Kansas suit filed last October alleged that the state’s policy violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution. They also argued that it violated their free speech rights under the First Amendment.
Gov. Laura Kelly lauded the consent decree, saying “(I)t was time for Kansas to move past its outdated and discriminatory anti-transgender policy.”
“This decision acknowledges that transgender people have the same rights as anyone else, including the right to easily obtain a birth certificate that reflects who they are,” Kelly said in a statement.
Under the consent decree, Kansans wanting to apply for an updated birth certificate can now do so by submitting a sworn statement accompanied by a passport, driver’s license or a certification from a healthcare professional confirming their gender identity.
Gonzalez-Pagan said the policy change builds not just on Lambda Legal’s court victories in Idaho and Puerto Rico, but years of advocacy by transgender people in Kansas, “who have been fighting for this for a long time.”
“That includes Stephanie Mott,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “I wish she could have lived to the day where she would see this victory that she had fought so hard for.”
Mott founded K-STEP, which was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with Nyla Foster, Luc Bensimon, Jessica Hicklin, and an individual identified only as C.K. Mott had sued Kansas separately over its policy previously, but later dropped her lawsuit. She died suddenly in March.
“Her advocacy to make Kansas better is remembered in this important decision and in other progress she achieved for transgender people,” Kelly said in her statement.
Before Kelly assumed office this year, Kansas had been hostile to expanding legal protections to include LGBT individuals.
In 2015, then-Gov. Sam Brownback rescinded an order by former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius barring discrimination against LGBT employees of the state.
And last year, Kansas was one of 16 states that urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that it’s legal to fire people for being transgender.
The Kansas Office of Vital Statistics routinely approved driver’s license amendments until 2012, when the Brownback administration told the agency to stop doing so.
Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas, said that made it difficult for transgender people to get driver’s licenses in other states and to register to vote in Kansas because of birth certificate requirements imposed by then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
“Just to be able to put a child in school, the birth certificate has to be disclosed to the school,” Witt said. “And in instances where you have a transgender child, those children were being outed. If you go in and get hired in a new job opportunity and you have to provide a birth certificate, those employees were being outed.
“So having the state of Kansas enter into this consent agreement is a big day for transgender Kansans.”
Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor at KCUR. You can reach him on Twitter@DanMargolies.
HelmerWICHITA (AP) — Sedgwick County officials are pushing back against an area legislator’s erroneous assertion during a public meeting that Wichita is a sanctuary city for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The Wichita Eagle reports that freshman state Rep. Cheryl Helmer, a Mulvane Republican, made the claim this week during a town hall meeting with U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran.
Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell said the city regularly cooperates with federal agencies on immigration enforcement.
A group advocating strict immigration limits included and then removed Sedgwick County from a list of so-called sanctuary counties last year after Sheriff Jeff Easter complained.
Helmer even suggested she had been robbed twice because of “that sanctuary city law.” She later backed off that statement and offered no evidence that Wichita is a sanctuary city.
Chemistry class at Topeka West High School (Photo by Chris Neal/Shooter Imaging)
By STEPHEN KORANDA Kansas News Service
Education officials in Kansas are taking a two-pronged approach to reducing teacher shortages: raising pay and fast-tracking teaching assistants and other professionals to the front of the classroom.
Last year, Kansas schools had more than 600 vacant positions. Many of the openings were concentrated in rural areas and the state’s most urban districts.
Low pay has been blamed for much of the trouble attracting and retaining teachers. But education officials believe they have an opportunity to tackle that with the recent boosts to state funding.
Lawmakers have approved multi-year school funding increases amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in response to a long-running lawsuit over school spending. That has given districts a chance to offer teacher raises that could be difficult to fit into school budgets in the past.
“We have an obligation to pay people more,” Education Commissioner Randy Watson said at a State Board of Education meeting this week. “We have an opportunity that the governor and the Legislature together have given us.”
The largest union representing teachers in the state is also urging districts to use the funding increase to pay school staff more.
The Kansas National Education Association said in a statement Thursday that average teacher pay in Kansas is around $49,800. The national union’s rankings show neighboring states range from just over $50,000 in Missouri to $54,500 in Nebraska.
“Teachers are professionals who shouldn’t need to work two, and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet,” KNEA President Mark Farr said.
Schools have been offering raises, but it wasn’t just salaries for teachers that lagged during leaner years.
Mark Tallman
Mark Tallman, with the Kansas Association of School Boards, said many districts would also like to restore programs cut during the state budget troubles that followed the national recession and the state income tax cuts passed in 2012.
“Boards recognize the need and desire to increase salaries,” Tallman said. “But that’s not the only claim on those new dollars. All this has to be balanced together.”
With the recession over, the hot economy is posing a new challenge for districts when it comes to hiring and keeping teachers.
Teachers often have job opportunities at schools in other states or completely different industries. The qualities that make a good teacher also make them attractive workers for higher-paying careers.
“If you can communicate with people, if you have patience, if you can solve problems, all of those can be transferable to many other professions,” Tallman said.
Beyond pay, Kansas is utilizing targeted programs to get people into teaching in unconventional ways. Two state-run pilot initiatives have shown success in filling vacancies, licensing 126 new teachers over the last two years.
Most of those newly minted teachers are in special education. The others are teaching at the elementary level.
The elementary program allows people with degrees in a field other than education to teach. The special ed initiative makes it easier for paraprofessionals to become fully licensed. Both programs require additional college coursework to get the license.
The state has multiple alternative licensing initiatives that have helped get teachers in the classroom, according to Board of Education Chair Kathy Busch.
“Some of our vacancies are in places where it’s hard for them to get teachers in the first place,” she said. “So sometimes they’re able to almost grow their own teachers right there in their buildings.”
In Garden City, that strategy of growing local teachers looks especially important. Afton Huck, the district’s human resources coordinator, hopes licensing teachers from the area might make them more likely to stay. The school district hasn’t had as much luck when recruiting teachers from out-of-state.
“It’s hard to retain those teachers,” she said. “After they get two or three years of experience they’re ready to go back to their home state.”
The alternative licensing programs are also important because there are simply fewer students graduating with education degrees. The Garden City district has sent representatives to colleges and career fairs in more than a dozen states to recruit teachers.
“Some of the universities that we’ve gone to in the past have totally shut down the programs because they just don’t have enough students interested in the educational program,” said Roy Cessna, public information coordinator for Garden City schools.
The Garden City district had around 30 vacancies at the beginning of last school year and managed to fill about half of them by the midpoint of the year. Huck said they expect to have a similar shortage this year.
The Kansas City school district is using state programs and adding their own additional supports to attract teachers. That district struggles especially to fill special education vacancies, partly because those teachers often need additional education.
“They have to be willing to go beyond that bachelor’s degree,” said Cynthia Fulks, the district’s director of recruitment.
The district pays bonuses to teachers who fill slots in high-need areas like math, science and English. There’s also help to pay for advanced degrees or other training. A waiver program allows teachers of other subjects to fill special education slots immediately while taking the additional needed classes.
With teacher shortages becoming the norm, the attitude has shifted from when recruitment was focused on ramping up in advance of the new school year. Now it’s a constant effort.
“It’s never over for us, anymore,” Fulks said. “Recruitment, for us, really has become a year-round type of activity.”
This fall, after districts have finished hiring teachers and started the new school year, the state Board of Education will compile numbers showing whether the two-pronged approach has been effective in cutting the classroom deficit.
“I’m hopeful we’ll see some improvement,” Busch said, “but I don’t think we’re over the hump yet.”
Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for Kansas Public Radio and the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.
Kevin V. Maxey, Jr./Kansas Dept. of Corrections photoBy BRENT MARTIN St. Joseph Post
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — A nearly month-long search for a man suspected in a shooting at Atchison’s “Juneteenth” celebration ended with his arrest in St. Joseph.
Atchison Police Chief Mike Wilson says a team of law enforcement officers apprehended 31-year-old Kevin Maxey, Jr. Wednesday afternoon at a St. Joseph apartment complex.
“Our detectives here at Atchison police have been searching for Maxey in connection to the shooting of a 42-year-old male in the 1100 block of North 8th here in Atchison that occurred around 3am on June the 9th,” Wilson tells St. Joseph Post. “Our detectives have been working with U.S. Marshal’s Office and information had been developed that Maxey was in the St. Joseph area.”
Atchison police say a group of about 20 had gathered at LFM park after the 14th Annual Atchison Juneteenth celebration in the early morning hours of June 9th. An argument broke out between two of them, which sparked the shooting. The victim, apparently, was not involved in the argument, but was struck twice by gunshots.
Officers who responded to the scene and found the man suffering from life-threatening injuries. He was taken to a St. Joseph hospital.
A warrant issued by the Kansas District Court of Atchison County charges Maxey with attempted second-degree murder, criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and criminal discharge of a firearm. Maxey is being held in Buchanan County.
Wilson says the investigation concluded Maxey likely had left the area.
“We actually believed that he was outside the Atchison area,” Wilson says. “We’ve worked with a number of agencies in various locations throughout, not only the Midwest area, but actually in other areas outside of the immediate Atchison area.”
A team which included members of the United States Marshal Fugitive Apprehension Team, the Buchanan County Drug Strike Force, the St. Joseph Missouri Street Crimes Unit, and detectives with the Atchison Police Department made the arrest Wednesday afternoon.
The victim is a 42-year-old Atchison man. Wilson says he is out of the hospital and recovering from his wounds. Atchison police have declined to release his name.
LENEXA, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City man who recently completed his quest of running marathons in all 50 states before the age of 50 credits a pair of gloves “delivered from the heavens” with getting him through his first one.
Forty-nine-year-old Austin Braithwait, whose final stop was a June 22 race in Duluth, Minnesota, ran his first marathon in Kansas City, Missouri, during an ice storm.
When Mile 16 rolled around, his hands were “freezing” and Braithwait was ecstatic to spot what looked like a pair of gloves lying in the middle of the course. Braithwait, then 26, was convinced one of the three runners ahead of him would snatch them up, leaving him to brave the elements for the remaining 10 miles. None did.
“I’m not sure I would have finished,” Braithwait told The Kansas City Star, “had those not been delivered from the heavens.”
Braithwait, of Lenexa, Kansas, called the experience “miserable,” and he waited eight more years before running another one. But eventually he was hooked, leading UMB Bank’s corporate trust during the week and running marathons on the weekends. Often his wife, Janna, and two children, Janna and Ritter, joined him.
Schedules often followed a similar pattern: a work meeting on Friday, a marathon on Saturday and a trip home on Sunday. Some weekends, including on a trip in the South, he ran a marathon in Mississippi on a Saturday and one in Alabama on Sunday. Ditto for one time on the East Coast, when Braithwait ran in Pennsylvania and New Jersey on back-to-back days.
Despite all the marathons he has run— 85 in total — Braithwait describes himself as something of a “hack” on the preparation side of things. He considers finishing in the top third or top half a successful outing.
He said that clocking faster times requires “a lot more time than I have to give from a work and family standpoint.” His best preparation often came via raw experience. Braithwait used the base he acquired from the 10 to 12 marathons he ran per year to prepare for the following ones.
“There’s definitely a sense of accomplishment,” Braithwait said. “It’s been cool to have that goal out there for the last seven or eight years and really seeing, ‘OK, I’m making progress.’ ”
As for the gloves he found all those years ago, well, those aren’t coming out of his drawer for running gear any time soon. They’re a keepsake of sorts.
Said Braithwait, chuckling: “I’ve never had the heart to throw them away.”
