JACKSON COUNTY — One person died in an accident just after 3:30p.m. Thursday in Jackson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2005 Toyota Corolla driven by Garrett N. Klahr, 16, Wetmore, was westbound on 286th Road and failed to stop at the stop sign at U.S. 75.

A southbound Kenworth semi driven by David J. Christianson, 54, Canby, MN., struck the Toyota in the passenger side. The vehicle spun around and traveled into the southwest ditch.

Klahr was transported to the hospital in Topeka where he died. Christianson was not injured. The KHP did not have details on seat belt usage of both drivers.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas will boost its annual spending on foster care by $35 million under state Department for Families and Children grants that have been awarded to five contractors.

DCF Secretary Gina Meier-Hummel had a news conference Thursday to introduce the contractors and discuss how she believes the grants will improve services for abused and neglected children. The department announced them Nov. 1 , six months after requesting proposals from interested parties.

The grants run four years, starting July 1. The state expects to spend $245 million on foster care during the fiscal year beginning on that date. That’s a 17 percent increase over the current fiscal year.

Departing Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer’s administration announced the grants five days before Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly was elected governor. She takes office Jan. 14.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — More sex crime charges have been filed in Kansas against a former charter school teacher.

42-year-old Randall Carter II, of Overland Park, Kansas, was free on bond when he was arrested again Friday.

He had been teaching at Lee A. Tolbert Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, when he was charged in May in Johnson County, Kansas, with multiple sex crimes involving two children. Charter officials said the children weren’t students at the school.

The new charges of rape, aggravated indecent liberties and sodomy involve a third child and date back to 2012.

Bond for Carter is set at $500,000. During a hearing Thursday, a judge denied his request to lower it.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two teens are facing federal gun charges after firearms and police equipment were stolen from an unmarked police car.

Leronte Swinton and Carvon Brown, both 19, are charged with illegal possession of stolen firearms.

Federal court documents show the two are suspects in several car break-ins and thefts around Kansas City and in Leavenworth and Wyandotte counties.

Prosecutors say a rifle, handgun and shotgun were taken from a patrol car parked in a south Kansas City on Nov. 10. Two Tasers, two bullet-resistant vests and two hand-held radios were also taken.

Investigators determined two vehicles the suspects were in were involved in several other thefts.

Police arrested Swinton and Brown Monday at a Kansas City home, where other stolen items were found.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov.-elect Laura Kelly has named a Democratic legislative leader’s top aide as her chief of staff.

The incoming Democratic governor announced Will Lawrence’s appointment Thursday and said he has a “sharp understanding of the legislative process.”

Lawrence had been chief of staff to Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka since 2016 after serving as Hensley’s staff attorney. He also was in a law firm with former Kansas House Minority Leader Paul Davis.

During the governor’s race, Lawrence filed an unsuccessful legal challenge to independent candidate Greg Orman’s right to appear on the November ballot.

Kelly also has named 23 advisers for her transition team who include former Republican Gov. Mike Hayden. Also among them is former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, who lost to Kelly in the Democratic primary.

SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a hit and run accident seeking the public’s assistance with any information.

Just after 10a.m. Thursday, a 41-year old woman was walking southbound on SW Urish Road and entered the crosswalk at SW 29th Street in Topeka, according to Sgt. Todd Stallbaumer.

A westbound vehicle, possibly a mid 2000s Honda 4-door, stuck the woman.  The victim described the driver as an older, white male.

EMS transported the victim to The University of Kansas St. Francis Campus with minor injuries.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office at 785-251-2200.

SEDGWICK COUNTY— A Kansas man was sentenced Thursday to the Hard 50 for the stabbing death of a woman whose body was found in a dumpster in Wichita last spring.

According to a media release from the Sedgwick County Attorney, District Judge Faith Maughan sentenced Donnell Stafford, 31 of Wichita, to life with no possibility of parole for 50 years.

Stafford was found guilty on October 22nd of first degree murder and two counts of cruelty to animals. Judge Maughan sentenced Stafford to one year in jail on each cruelty charge and ran the sentences concurrently with the life sentence.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Another high-level Sedgwick County official has been forced out amid an FBI investigation.

Commissioners voted 3-2 on Wednesday to pay County Manager Michael Scholes $205,427 to get him to leave.

Commissioners said their reason for forcing out Scholes was that he had created a toxic environment.

Scholes had been under fire after providing information to the FBI in an investigation last year of Commissioner Michael O’Donnell, who is awaiting federal trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges related to campaign funds. O’Donnell, who’s still a member of the commission, voted against the payment, saying it’s too high.

Last month, the commission agreed to pay $77,000 to get rid of former Counselor Eric Yost, who was suspended after releasing details of efforts to oust Scholes.

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Officials are making plans to restore the main Kansas State University library after a blaze caused extensive smoke and water damage.

Students were invited Tuesday to offer input on the renderings of the inside of Hale Library. The building was undergoing renovations in May when a fire broke out. Plans calls for renovating all four floors of the building.

The renderings call for an innovation lab on the first and second floors, connected by a staircase, expanded athlete tutoring space in the Student Success Center and new classroom spaces scattered throughout the building.

The dean of libraries, Lori Goetsch, says the biggest change students can expect is the innovation lab and maker space. Those areas will be full of virtual reality and artificial intelligence equipment.

GARDEN CITY, Kan. (AP) — An autopsy has found that heatstroke killed a western Kansas community college football player who collapsed after the first day of practice.

An athletic trainer found 19-year-old Braeden Bradforth, of Neptune, New Jersey, unconscious outside his Garden City Community College dorm room on Aug. 1. He died that night at a hospital.

Former coach, Jeff Sims, who’s leaving the school to coach at Missouri Southern State University, previously said the emergency room doctor suspected a blood clot. But an autopsy report filed last week blamed the death on exertional heat stroke. The report noted that the 300 pound lineman was vomiting and had a history of asthma.

Administrators at the community college are conducting an internal review of the circumstances of his death.

KANSAS CITY — In an effort to help homeowners with package theft prevention, Kansas City  police have posted a video on social media. It shows a man attempting to steal a package from the porch of a Kansas City home until an alarm sounds.

“The homeowner was out of state, but his security camera app notified him of motion, and when he saw the suspect go for the box on the porch, the homeowner set off the alarm. Looks like it worked.”

Police also suggested having the sound on while watching the video makes it more fun to watch.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The locomotive was painted to resemble Air Force One, but George H.W. Bush joked that if it had been around during his presidency, he may have preferred to ride the rails rather than take to the skies.

“I might have left Air Force One behind,” Bush quipped during the 2005 unveiling of 4141, a blue and gray locomotive commissioned in honor of the 41st president and unveiled at Texas A&M University.

On Thursday, that same 4,300-horsepower machine will carry Bush’s casket, along with relatives and close friends, for around 70 miles. The journey through five small Texas towns was expected to take about two and a half hours. It will deliver the casket from suburban Houston to College Station.

There, a motorcade will take Bush to his presidential library at the university, where he will be laid to rest at a private ceremony next to his wife, Barbara, who died in April, and his daughter Robin, who died at age 3 in 1953.

The train’s sixth car, a converted baggage hauler called “Council Bluffs,” has been fitted with transparent sides to allow mourners lining the tracks on Thursday views of Bush’s flag draped coffin.

It will be the eighth funeral train in U.S. history and the first since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s body traveled from the National Cathedral in Washington through seven states to his Kansas hometown of Abilene 49 years ago. Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train was the first, in 1865.

Robert F. Kennedy was never president, but he was running for the White House when he was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968. His body was later transported to New York City for a funeral Mass and then taken by private train to Washington for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks for the 200-plus-mile journey.

Union Pacific originally commissioned the Bush locomotive for the opening of an exhibit at his presidential library titled “Trains: Tracks of the Iron Horse.” It was one of the few times the company has painted a locomotive any color other than its traditional yellow. After a brief training session during 4141’s unveiling 13 years ago, Bush took the engineer’s seat and helped take the locomotive for a 2-mile excursion.

“We just rode on the railroads all the time, and I’ve never forgotten it,” Bush said at the time, recalling how he took trains, and often slept on them, during trips as a child with his family. He also called the locomotive “the Air Force One of railroads.”

Bush, who died last week at his Houston home at age 94, was eulogized Wednesday at a funeral service at the National Cathedral. By evening, his casket was at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston.

The funeral train has been part of the official planning for his death for years, Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said.

Union Pacific was contacted by federal officials in early 2009 and asked, at Bush’s request, about providing a funeral train at some point, company spokesman Tom Lange said.

“We said, ‘Of course and also we have this locomotive that we would want to have obviously be part of it,'” Lange said. He noted that trains were the mode of transportation that first carried Bush to his service as a naval aviator in World War II and back home again.

Eisenhower was the last president to travel by train regularly. A key reason was his wife, Mamie, who hated to fly. During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower traveled more than 51,000 miles and made 252 stops. And while he often flew, his wife rode the train the whole time, Union Pacific said.

Still, when Bush beat Democrat Michael Dukakis and won the presidency in 1988, both candidates used trains to make some campaign stops. Bush also occasionally traveled by train in 1992, when he was defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton, including making Midwest stops aboard a train dubbed “The Spirit of America.”