HUTCHINSON– Two of three people arrested Tuesday after a search warrant was served on a Hutchinson home appeared in a Reno County court on Thursday morning on drug-related charges.

Benjamin Cullum, 40, Langdon faces possible charges of possession of marijuana, possession of drug proceeds and possession of drug paraphernalia. He apparently was arrested for a parole violation as well.

Maira Meza, 24, Newton was jailed for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. She allegedly had a pipe with residue in her purse. She’s also being held for a warrant in Harvey County.

A third person arrested was 30-year-old Nicole Hays. She faces charges including distribution of marijuana, possession of prescription drugs, no tax stamp, possession of a firearm by a known felon and interference with law enforcement.

She was able to post bond and should make a first appearance next week.
When searching the home in the 400 block of North Plum, the Reno County Drug Unit allegedly found a black zip-up nylon case with prescription pills and 50 grams of marijuana in Hays’ bedroom.

They also found a scale, safe, vacuum sealer, two empty Ziploc bags and owe sheets, according to police.

In the safe was $120 in control buy money, $10 more was allegedly found in Hays’ wallet and $180 in twenties were in Cullum’s pocket.

He also allegedly had $1,903 in another pocket, which he alleges he won at a casino. However, some of the bills had serial numbers that match money from the control buys made by the drug unit.
They also allegedly found a bag with residue and a scale in Cullum’s truck.

In the garage of the home was a Ruger LCP 380 gun in a metal case, a baggie of methamphetamine and a scale. More marijuana and smoking pipes with residue were also found.
Meza’s bond was set at a mere $250, while Cullum’s is set at $1,000. It’s so low because he has a hold from the Kansas Department of Corrections for a parole violation. Both will be back in court next week.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A judge has made it easier for a man to fight deportation after prosecutors say he posed for decades in the U.S. as his dead infant brother to escape child support obligations and other legal difficulties in Canada.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten on Thursday sentenced Leslie Lyle Camick to 364 days for obstruction of justice — just a day shy of the one-year sentence prosecutors wanted to make his crime an aggravated felony leading to immediate deportation. He has been in custody for 27 months.

Camick was convicted in 2014 of identity theft, fraud and other charges.

An appeals court in September overturned most convictions for lack of sufficient evidence, ordering resentencing for the remaining obstruction count. It found Camick sued the victim after his indictment as retaliation.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A memorial has been dedicated in Kansas City to the 114 people killed 34 years ago in one of the nation’s worst structural disasters.

Two-hundred people from around the country turned out Friday to view the 24-foot sculpture entitled “Sending Loves” The names of those killed in the 1981 skywalks collapse at Kansas City’s former Hyatt Regency Hotel are etched in the memorial.

The collapse occurred during a dance that drew about 1,500 people to the hotel. Shortly after 7 p.m., the fourth-floor skywalk gave way, falling on a second-floor skywalk. Then both dropped about 45 feet into the crowded lobby.

Besides the 114 people killed, more than 200 were injured. The memorial also honors the rescuers who rushed to the scene to cut people out of the twisted metal.

HUTCHINSON – The former St. Elizabeth Hospital building in Hutchinson is scheduled for auction next week.

The facility, referred to as the North Hospital, at 500 west 20^th Street and Monroe was built in 1920 by the Catholic church.

It originally had 50 hospital beds and a nursing school.

The four story brick building located on the 1.8-acre corner lot now had office units on the first floor and apartment units on the second floor.

The third and fourth floors are in the process of being renovated, according to Auction Management Corporation.

The auction on November 19 begins at 1 p.m. There will also be webcast bidding that day.

Details on the sale are available here.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — University of Kansas students and faculty have met at a forum to discuss the effects of racism, expressing frustration with school administration in Lawrence.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the Wednesday forum drew more than 1,000 people to the auditorium at the main student union on campus, with more watching from an overflow room.

The forum was announced Monday in the wake of recent student protests over racism at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little moderated the event, and listened as people voiced their experiences and concerns.

Several members of a group known as Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk took to the stage with signs and demanded actions from the

school, including that the university hire a director for the Office of Multicultural Affairs by Dec. 15 and that concealed weapons be banned from campus.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas woman has pleaded guilty to charges accusing her of embezzling about $471,000 from her employer.

The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri said in a release that Kimberly Joyce Padgett of Osawatomie, Kansas, pleaded guilty Thursday to five counts of wire fraud.

The prosecutor’s office says Padgett admitted embezzling about $471,000 from Reliant Financial Services in Kansas City, Missouri. Among her duties at the company were paying bills and preparing paychecks. She’s accused of writing $350,000 in checks to herself and using a company credit card to pay for such things as clothing, jewelry and hotels.

She faces up to 20 years in federal prison without parole, as well as fines.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A professional skier who walked away after falling 1,600 feet down an Alaska mountain says the experience was “gnarly.”

The video, courtesy Teton Gravity Research, of Canadian skier Ian McIntosh cartwheeling down a near vertical mountain has gone viral this week.

The fall happened last April in the Neacola Mountains, about 125 miles southwest of Anchorage. McIntosh was being filmed for the Teton Gravity Research movie “Paradise Waits,” which opens this week.

He says in a video posted on the company’s website that he saw a ridge in the snow and thought he could ski on either side of it.

But as he chose one side, he says his feet just dropped out from under him as he tumbled down the vertical wall. A body camera and footage from a helicopter followed him caroming down the mountain, capturing every bone-jarring grunt as he tumbled after yelling an emphatic, “No!”

Teton Gravity Research owner Todd Jones said in a release that the fall “was the most terrifying crash I’ve ever seen.”

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers automatically are getting an 8.5 percent raise in their per diem allowance.

The Wichita Eagle reports the raise is because of a state law that increased lawmakers’ daily “subsistence payments” by more than 28 percent through the past seven years. The Legislature set it up in 2008 so members’ per diem rises with a federal allowance.

The per diem payments are the set amount lawmakers get to pay their living expenses each day they work in Topeka.

As of Oct. 1, the per diem amount is $140 a day, up from $129. The allowance payments are in addition to the state lawmakers’ base salary of $88.66 a day when they attend session and committee meetings.

SALINE COUNY -The body of a missing Lindsborg man was found Tuesday afternoon in Saline County.

Saline County Sheriff’s Captain Roger Soldan said the body of 25-year-old Christopher Howell was found just after 5p.m. in a hedgerow by some people out hitting golf balls in the 4600 block of South Old-81 Highway.

Howell was last seen on May 6th by a relative who dropped him off in Salina so he could catch a bus to go to Oregon to see another relative.

His family filed a missing person report in August.

Soldan said an autopsy would be conducted.

OLATHE – A Kansas woman and child were injured in an accident just before 9a.m. on Thursday in Johnson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2012 Chevy truck driven by Kyle P. Carpenter, 21, Lawrence, was southbound on Interstate 35 at 119th Street in Olathe.

The vehicle veered to the right and struck a 2000 Chevy Suburban that was legally parked on the right shoulder.

Two pedestrians near the Suburban Sonia L. Barnes, 48, Olathe, and 2-year old, Gonziya Duvergel, Kansas City, were transported to Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

Carpenter was properly restrained at the time of accident and possibly injured, according to the KHP.

KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is trying to rally hundreds of thousands of eBay sellers to get behind a proposed trade deal between the U.S. and 11 other countries.

Obama intends to sign the deal, but he could face a tough task in getting Congress to ratify it.

Obama says the Trans Pacific Partnership will help preserve a free and open Internet. The growth among Internet users is greatest in developing regions like Southeast Asia and Obama says “they’re looking to connect and buy from sellers like you.”

He says one chapter in the agreement is dedicated to e-commerce. It establishes rules that ensure companies and consumers can access and move data freely without facing arbitrary blocking of their websites.

Obama’s message is being emailed to more than 600,000 eBay members.

By JIM MCLEAN, ANDY MARSO

Three Republicans will not be returning to the House Health and Human Services Committee next year.

The reason: Their support for Medicaid expansion.

House Speaker Ray Merrick, a conservative Republican from Stilwell, has removed Rep. Susan Concannon of Beloit, Rep. Barbara Bollier of Mission Hills and Rep. Don Hill of Emporia from the panel and given them new assignments. All three are

moderate Republicans.

“It’s heartbreaking because these are smart, well-versed in health issues, hard-working members of the committee,” said Rep. Jim Ward of Wichita, the ranking Democrat on the health committee.

Ward called the purge “a desperate attempt to try to stop a vote on Medicaid expansion.”

Concannon, the former director of the Mitchell County Regional Medical Foundation, is the committee’s vice chairwoman and was former committee chairman David Crum’s preferred replacement when he retired from the Legislature in 2014.

Hill is a pharmacist and Bollier is a retired physician.

The changes will reduce the health care expertise on the committee, Bollier said.

“I really believe that as governments legislate health care policy that experts with experience should be at the table helping to shape that policy,” she said. “We will still be actively participating to the best of our ability, but we won’t be able to contribute to committee discussions.”

The changes appeared to be part of a major shake-up of committee assignments ahead of the upcoming session and 2016 elections in which all 165 seats in the House and Senate will be contested.

In a statement issued through his spokesperson late Wednesday, Merrick confirmed that the reorganization of the health panel was tied to the expansion issue.

“Kansans oppose expanding Obamacare, a program that has busted budget after budget in states that have expanded it,” Merrick said. “I will continue to fight to protect Kansans from the disastrous effects of Obamacare.”

Polls conducted by the Kansas Hospital Association have consistently shown that a majority of Kansans favor expanding KanCare, the name given to Kansas’ Medicaid program when it was privatized in 2013. The most recent, conducted in April, showed that 64 percent of likely Kansas voters supported expanding KanCare eligibility, including 58 percent of the Republicans surveyed.

Support increased to 69 percent when respondents were told that expansion would attract more than $2 billion in additional federal funding to the state. Support declined to 58 percent when surveyors made it clear expansion was a part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

While it’s the “speaker’s prerogative” to make committee assignments, Bollier said the politics underlying the changes made to the health committee should concern voters.

“From the people’s perspective, when you try to silence voices a red flag should be raised about democracy and what it means,” she said. “This is my sixth year in the Legislature, and I have never seen upheaval like this.”

The recent closure of Mercy Hospital in Independence has intensified the expansion debate and prompted some legislative opponents to reconsider their positions. Senate Vice President Jeff King, a Republican whose southeast Kansas district includes Independence, is now urging consideration of the kind of conservative expansion plan adopted in Indiana, another so-called “red state” with a conservative governor and Legislature.

“Saying ‘no’ to everything has to stop being a viable political option because there are real lives being affected,” King said at a recent KanCare expansion forum in Wichita.

Expansion would extend KanCare coverage to non-disabled adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level: annually $16,105 for an individual and $32,913 for a family of four. Currently adults are eligible for coverage only if they have dependent children and earn less than 33 percent of FPL: $7,870 for a family of four.

Most of the approximately 425,000 Kansans now covered by KanCare are low-income children, new mothers, people with disabilities or elderly adults needing long-term care who have exhausted their personal resources.

Editor’s note: The KanCare expansion forum in Wichita was sponsored in part by the Kansas Health Foundation, which provides funding to the Kansas Health Institute, the parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service.

Jim McLean is executive editor of KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.

Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Many grocery stores have eliminated tainted beef from suppliers that used products from an Omaha meat-processing facility.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t listed any E. coli outbreaks in Nebraska or Kansas this week. The newspaper says local health departments weren’t available for comment Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a nationwide recall last week for more than 167,000 pounds of All American Meats Inc. ground beef products for possible E. coli contamination. The bacteria can cause death or illness.

Retailers across Kansas are included on a USDA-issued list of locations that might have tainted meat on their shelves.

The ground beef items were produced on Oct. 16, 2015. The following products are subject to recall:

80-lb. (approximate weight) boxes of “Ground Beef 80% Lean 20% Fat (Fine Grind)” with Sell By Date 11-03-2015 and case code 62100.
80-lb. (approximate weight) boxes of “Ground Beef 73% Lean 27% Fat (Fine Grind)” with Sell By Date 11-03-2015 and case code 60100.
60-lb. (approximate weight) boxes of “Ground Beef Round 85% Lean 15% Fat (Fine Grind)” with Sell By Date 11-03-2015 and case code 68560.
60-lb. (approximate weight) boxes of “Ground Beef Chuck 81% Lean 19% Fat (Fine Grind)” with Sell By Date 11-03-2015 and case code 68160.
60-lb. (approximate weight) boxes of “Ground Beef Chuck 81% Lean 19% Fat (Fine Grind)” with Sell By Date 11-03-2015 and case code 63130.
80-lb. (approximate weight) boxes of “Ground Beef Chuck 81% Lean 19% Fat (Fine Grind)” with Sell By Date 11-03-2015 and case code 63100.