BOURBON COUNTY — One person died in an accident just before 4p.m. Sunday in Bourbon County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Dodge Van driven by Dixie Birdsong, 60, Mapleton, was westbound on Kansas 31 one mile east of the Kansa 65 Junction.

The driver fell asleep. The van traveled off the north side of the roadway, hit an embankment and came to rest in a ditch.

Birdsong was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Frontier Forensics.

Two passengers in the van Taylor Birdsong, 16, and Kyleigh Birdsong, 13, both of Mapleton, were transported to Freeman Hospital. None of the occupants of the van were wearing seat belts, according to the KHP.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A 26-year-old man has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for a fatal shooting in 2015.

Fernando Diaz was sentenced Friday for involuntary manslaughter in the death of 22-year-old Christopher Galvan.

Topeka police responding to a call of a vehicle crash in east Topeka found Galvan inside a car suffering from a gunshot wound. He died three days later.

Diaz fled to Mexico, where he was arrested in September 2018. He originally was charged with second-degree murder.

Diaz was sentenced to about 10½ years. That will be served consecutively with a 2014 case in which Diaz pleaded guilty to aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, fleeing and interference with a law enforcement officer.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Department of Agriculture is accepting applications from farmers who want to be part of the state’s industrial hemp research program, which state lawmakers created last April.

One of the farmers eager to get on board is PJ Sneed, who is building infrastructure, clearing land and establishing a cover crop on his land in western Reno County.

“I’m very excited; for me, it’s been a long time coming,” Sneed said. “It has for a lot of people, especially the grassroots movement. We’ve all been waiting for this moment.”

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer signed legislation last April to allow industrial hemp production only for research purposes, with a goal of encouraging the resurgence of hemp as a production crop and to promote economic development. The 2018 federal farm bill also legalized hemp farming.

The agriculture department has spent the last year gathering public input and establishing regulations for the program. Applications are due to the department by March 1.

Before the federal farm bill was approved, Kansas could only establish a research program for hemp growing but the state is now open to establishing commercial growing if the legislature approves.

“So nothing is changing yet. The law that passed last spring and the regulations that go with it are what’s on the books,” agriculture department spokeswoman Heather Lansdowne said.

Lansdowne said the earliest the state could have additional laws to allow industrial hemp would likely be 2020.

Sneed agreed and predicted a large increase in hemp growers in the new future.

“I think in year two you’ll see a huge boom after people see what it is and how it’s grown,” he said. “In 2020 I think you’ll start to see more banks open up for commercial loans and things like that.”

The application process will include background checks and more.

The Hemp Biz Conference and the Planted Association of Kansas, of which Sneed is a member, will host a symposium on hemp growing in Hutchinson on Feb. 23. He said it’s designed to help farmers network and find markets but the focus this year will be on rules and regulations and the application process.

SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas registered offender on new charges.

Just before 4 p.m. Saturday, police conducted a traffic stop in the 1200 Block of SE 37th Street in Topeka for expired registration, according to Lt. Robert Simmons.

During the investigation, officers found the passenger, 40-year-old Lamar Moss, in possession of a handgun and marijuana.

Moss is a convicted felon and prohibited to possess a firearm. Police arrested him and booked him into the Department of Corrections on the charges of Felon in Possession of a Firearm and Possession of Marijuana.

Moss is a registered violent offender in the state of Kansas for Murder in the 2nd Degree.

This is the 16th case in 2019 with a charge involving a felon in possession of a firearm reported by the Topeka Police Department.

The Kansas Senate expected to pass a resolution Thursday decrying the New York law as harmful to both “unborn children” and women. Twenty-seven of the 40 senators are sponsors, all but one of the chamber’s Republicans. GOP leaders were so eager to send the message that they dispensed with committee hearings and set a vote three days after the measure was introduced.Abortion opponents across the nation have criticized the New York law as allowing abortions up to the moment of birth, with one resolution introduced in South Dakota calling it “barbaric.” The law permits women to end their pregnancies after 24 weeks for health reasons, when the state’s previous law said a woman’s life had to be at risk.But in Kansas, the public condemnation also highlights abortion opponents’ anxiety over what the future holds in their state. The Kansas Supreme Court is considering whether the state constitution protects abortion rights in a lawsuit that threatens to upend nearly a decade’s worth of restrictions and stymie new ones. The court hasn’t ruled — thwarting work on a response.

“Why are we sending this message to New York? Because we want to our let our Kansas Supreme Court know that we would find this abortion mentality in our state as totally unacceptable,” state Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, told her colleagues during debate on the resolution.

The New York law was designed to codify protections for a woman’s right to obtain an abortion granted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and other court rulings a time when abortion-rights backers fear a more conservative high court might strike down Roe. It replaces a 1970 state law legalizing abortion.

Opposition from “people who are anti-choice” isn’t surprising, said New York state Sen. Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat and a longtime supporter of the legislation.

“Lies and attacks are not going to intimidate New York from standing up for women’s rights,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Yonkers Democrat.

In Kansas, Democratic senators are likely to send their own statement to counter their state’s formal resolution, which would be sent to New York’s governor and all its legislators. Sen. David Haley, a Kansas City Democrat, told his colleagues during their debate that New York “really doesn’t care” that Kansas legislators oppose the law.

Criticism of other states’ laws can spill over into formal action. A handful of liberal states have restricted travel by government employees to states with laws viewed as discriminatory against LGBTQ individuals. Kansas is on a list of nine states targeted by California.

In Missouri, a resolution introduced this week in the state Senate urges GOP Gov. Mike Parson to boycott New York and other states with similar abortion laws and prevent state workers from traveling there except in emergencies.

“Many, many of my constituents have reached out to me and said, ‘What can we do about this?’ Well you know, sorry, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it,” said the resolution’s sponsor, Sen. Paul Wieland, a conservative St. Louis-area Republican.

Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican, said New Yorkers’ celebration of their new law “just made a lot of people cringe.”

“We believe in Kansas in a culture of life, and most people in America believe in protecting life,” Wagle said during the debate on her state’s resolution.

In other red states, officials have condemned the New York law as they’ve pursued new abortion restrictions.

Supporters in Arkansas of a proposed “trigger law” to ban most abortions if Roe is overturned mentioned New York’s policy. In Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds mentioned it as an impetus behind a proposed state constitutional amendment meant to overturn an Iowa Supreme Court decision last year protecting abortion rights.

In Kansas, legislators have adopted the approach of the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life in seeking incremental expected to survive federal court challenges. The group is pursuing legislation this year to require providers to tell women using medication to terminate their pregnancies that the process still can be reversed after the first of two pills.

But work on any legislation is clouded by the case before the Kansas Supreme Court, which heard arguments from attorneys nearly two years ago.

Abortion opponents haven’t introduced a proposed constitutional change yet, arguing that they need to see how the court actually rules. And Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, said abortion opponents also could have an easier time building support for an amendment after a ruling than before it.

Meanwhile, abortion opponents acknowledged that it’s helpful to keep abortion issues visible by highlighting opposition to the New York law. Haley said the resolution creates a test vote on abortion issues to help GOP leaders in lobbying for other measures.

“There are other shoes to drop,” Haley said. “By no means at all do I think the discussion regarding abortion is done.”

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By STEPHAN BISAHA

Simplistic crisis plans and missing mandatory training by some Kansas schools led the Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday to reinforce its suicide prevention requirements.

Suicide rates in the United States have been going up for years, but the rates have risen faster in Kansas. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Kansas suicide rate increased by 45 percent from 1999 to 2016.

The youth suicide rate in Kansas more than doubled from 2005 to 2015. That led to the creation of the Youth Suicide Prevention Task Force and its recommendation of a state coordinator focusing on the issue.

“More needs to be done because the problem is right in our face,” said Scott Rothschild, a spokesman for the Kansas Association of School Boards.

Then-Gov. Sam Brownback signed the Jason Flatt Act in 2016. The law required mandatory suicide prevention training for all school employees and detailed crisis plans.

Wichita Public Schools officials said they have noticed an uptick in reporting from their staff regarding suicide concerns since the law passed. Advocates say the law has helped bring more awareness to the issue.

“Before 2016, you would not have seen mental health fairs in the schools,” said Steve Arkins, founder of the suicide prevention foundation Speak Up, located in the Kansas City area. “You would not have seen student councils and clubs develop to try to promote mental wellness in their schools.”

But the act has received some pushback in Kansas. A failed bill in the Kansas Statehouse last year would have removed the need to provide the one-hour annual training to all employees. Some districts have said it’s a waste of resources to train workers who have little-to-no contact with students, such as janitors and plumbers.

Wichita Public Schools trains all its employees in suicide prevention, but district officials question the need to provide training to all workers.

“It’s a great thing to provide that training, but we do question the need to train, for example, seasonal employees,” said Terri Moses, the director of safety services at Wichita Public Schools. “It is a drain on resources and logistically it’s a difficult thing to do.”

A Kansas State Department of Education survey of school districts found more than a third of districts were not providing suicide prevention training to their mental health workers.

The state board adopted the council’s recommendations Tuesday to determine how to better monitor the mandatory training.

The board also approved more flexibility in implementing the training. Schools will now be able to provide specialized training for different personnel, though the one-hour of training for all staff is still required. That would require a change to state law.

KSDE officials say the new law will prevent the annual training from becoming just another hour in a long list of mandated training that employees doze through.

“You get these critical truly life-and-death type discussions that we need to have and they get regulated to a checklist,” said Myron Melton, an education program consultant with KSDE.

The mental health advisory council also took issue with the crisis plans at schools. The state board requires that the plans include guidelines for identifying students with thoughts of suicide, intervention and dealing with the aftermath of suicide.

But most districts had little more in their plans than who workers should contact in the school for all matters related to suicide. KSDE will provide crisis templates to schools and assist in updating their current plans.

“We just want to make sure they have suicide protocols so that it’s clear what they are to do if something happens,” said Kathy Busch, the chair of the Kansas State Board of Education.

Stephan Bisaha reports on education for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on @SteveBisaha.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say more than five inmate fights that all occurred within a week at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility prompted jail officials to move up the timing of a large-scale search that confiscated contraband, including inmate-made weapons.

Jail spokesman Jordan Bell said Friday the fights were all gang-related and none of the inmates suffered serious injuries. The fights broke out among two or three inmates and involved “homemade stabbing devices.” Several inmates were treated for injuries at the facility’s clinic. No staff members were hurt.

The facility temporarily halted visitation privileges the weekend of Feb. 2-3

and restricted movement of inmates because of the fights.

Tuesday’s search involved more than 1,000 inmates in the jail’s central unit yielded 46 weapons, 10 cell phones, eight phone chargers, illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia.

SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting and asking the public for help to identify a suspect.

Just after 1a.m. Friday, police responded to report of a shooting at a home in the 800 Block of South San Pablo in Wichita, according to officer Charley Davidson.

Officers found a 58-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to her back. She was transported to a local hospital in non-life-threatening injuries.

Investigators learned the victim heard a knock at her door. An unknown suspect fired multiple shots from outside the residence, according to Davidson.

Police don’t believe the shooting is a random act. Davidson did not have suspect information. In addition to the victim, there were two other adults and a baby in the home.

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call police.

MITCHELL COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a report of theft and asking the public to help identify a suspect.

On Friday, a man wearing a Hollister hoodie and a gas monkey hat used several generated cards to extract money from ATM’s in Beloit, according to a social media report from Beloit Police.

The suspect is thought to be driving a White in color Chrysler minivan with 60 day plates.

The Beloit Police Department is offering a $500 dollar reward for the arrest or conviction of this individual and you will remain anonymous.

If you see him or the possible vehicle notify Law Enforcement immediately and do not approach him or the vehicle.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A new $4.4 million facility is being built at the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center in Wichita to treat veterans’ addictions.

Medical center director Rick Ament said at a groundbreaking Friday that the inpatient center is “a badly needed service for veterans between Kansas City and Oklahoma City.”

The hospital sends between 15 and 20 veterans every month to Leavenworth or Kansas City for residential treatment for substance abuse.

VA spokesman Akeam Ashford says the new facility will have 12 beds to treat veterans in Wichita. There are currently 183 veterans enrolled in the outpatient substance abuse program in Wichita.

Construction is expected to be completed in October, with patient treatments starting in January.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Lawmakers say a federal budget compromise approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump provides $50 million of additional federal funding to maintain Amtrak rail passenger service through New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas.

New Mexico Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan said Friday the funding for the Southwest Chief route will enable Amtrak to pay matching funding for a grant to pay for maintenance and safety improvements to the Southwest Chief route.

Amtrak officials previously proposed replacing train service with bus service between Dodge City, Kansas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico — about a quarter of the 2,265-mile (3,645-kilometer) route providing daily train service between Los Angeles and Chicago.

The New Mexico lawmakers said the funding was also pushed by senators from Colorado and Kansas.

CAMDENTON, Mo. (AP) — The parents of two suburban Kansas City victims of a Lake of the Ozarks boat crash have filed a lawsuit.

The suit was filed in Camden County, Missouri, Circuit Court on behalf of the families of 23-year-old Joseph LeMark, of Overland Park, Kansas, and 21-year-old Hailey Hochandel, of Olathe, Kansas.

They were killed in May along with 24-year-old Daniel Lewis, who was driving the boat when it slammed into a rock bluff in the dark. Two others were injured, including the boat’s owner, 22-year-old Hayden Frazier.

The suit alleges that Lewis was intoxicated and operated the craft in a negligent and careless manner. It says Frazier was negligent in allowing him to do so.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount in damages.

Ashley Lamb a 22-year-old senior at Kansas State University was also injured in the crash.