(AP) – Police in northeastern Kansas are seeking the man who shot and killed a Fort Riley soldier.

Investigators say 28-year-old Army Sgt. Ronald Evans Taylor was found dead late Friday after crashing his car into a house Ogden. The two-tour veteran of Iraq had been shot, but authorities have not said exactly where the shooting occurred or how many times Taylor was hit.

The shooting is believed to have occurred a few blocks from Taylor’s off-post home in Ogden.

Riley County Police are not commenting on whether he might have known the killer. They’re also not talking about a possible motive, but say detectives have several theories.

Taylor was an Army X-ray technician and father of a young boy.

(AP) – Social Security recipients will get a raise in January — their first increase in benefits since 2009. Experts project the increase will be about 3.5 percent, and on Wednesday, about 55 million beneficiaries will find out for sure.

The annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is based on a measure of inflation that Congress adopted in the 1970s. Since
then, it has resulted in annual increases averaging 4.2 percent.

There was no COLA in 2010 or 2011 because inflation was too low. That, however, has been small comfort to the millions of retirees
and disabled people who have seen their retirement accounts dwindle and their home values drop during the economic downturn.

(AP) – Federal prosecutors will decide whether a 54-black man who was doused with rubbing alcohol and set on fire by white intruders is the victim of a hate crime.

A 23-year-old former Council Grove man was arrested Sunday in connection with the Oct. 7 attack on 54-year-old Sterling Law in Law’s Council Grove home.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports Law sat in his home for four days after the attack without getting medical treatment for burns. His employer of more than 30 years went to check on him after Law called in sick, and found him in pain.

Law’s brother says two men broke into Sterling Law’s home around 3 a.m., covered his pants with rubbing alcohol and lit it with a lighter.

(AP) – The mother of a missing Missouri baby may not be casting herself in the best light by telling national media that she drank heavily the night her daughter disappeared.

But her attorney says such honesty shows that Deborah Bradley has “nothing to hide.”

Bradley told television audiences Monday that she may have blacked out in the hours before she and Jeremy Irwin reported that their 10-month-old daughter Lisa was missing from their Kansas City home early Oct. 4. Bradley also now says she last saw her daughter hours earlier than she originally told police.

The couple’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, says he doesn’t know of anyone under such an intense umbrella of suspicion ever being so open and forthright.

Police have said they have no suspects and no major leads.

(AP) – A central Kansas woman who organized a college homecoming parade is hospitalized after being hit by mules apparently spooked by a train horn.

Sterling Police Chief Ed Truelove told The Hutchinson News the injured woman, Millie Casey, has been involved for years as a volunteer in various parades. Casey organized the Sterling College homecoming parade on Saturday.

Truelove says police had stopped traffic for the parade as it wound from the campus through downtown Sterling. When a passing train sounded its horn, the chief says, the startled mules darted into Casey. She was taken to a hospital in Hutchinson.

Truelove says he doesn’t believe Casey’s injuries were life-threatening

A central Missouri man has been killed in an accident involving a deer on a southern Kansas highway.

The Kansas Highway Patrol says the man was driving west on U.S. 160 shortly after 5 a.m. Monday when his car struck the deer in the roadway. The car hit a guardrail and rolled down an embankment.

The driver was identified as 19-year-old Cephas Yoder of Boonville, Mo. The Highway Patrol says Yoder was thrown from his car.

The accident happened west of Medicine Lodge, about 20 miles north of the Oklahoma line.

(AP) – Police in Riley County say a soldier from Fort Riley was shot and wounded during a game of Russian roulette.

WIBW-TV reports the incident happened Saturday night at a Manhattan apartment. Police say several people were playing with a .38-caliber revolver when the 19-year-old soldier shot himself in the upper arm. The soldier was taken to a hospital and is recovering.

Police say alcohol was involved in the incident. Investigators are looking into the shooting and say some participants in the game could be charged.

No arrests have been made.

Attorneys for the Kansas man accused of killing a 14-year-old Great Bend girl have asked the court to bar the teen’s family from showing emotion in the courtroom during his trial.

The motion filed last week in the capital murder case of Adam Longoria also asks Judge Hannelore Kitts to keep the girl’s family and friends from sitting directly before the jury.

The 37-year-old Great Bend man is charged with capital murder in the death of Alicia DeBolt, whose charred body was found at the asphalt plant where Longoria worked in August 2010. Alicia had disappeared days earlier from her Great Bend home.

No trial date has been set. If convicted of capital murder, Longoria would face life in prison without parole. Prosecutors have said they won’t pursue the death penalty

(AP) – The latest legal skirmish over a new Kansas law designed to strip federal funds from a Planned Parenthood chapter is expected to take place Tuesday in a federal courtroom in Wichita.

A Dodge City clinic with no ties to Planned Parenthood is seeking a court order forcing the state to resume payment of the federal family planning money. The Dodge City clinic says without the money it will be forced to close and leave about 650 mostly low-income patients without access to reproductive health care services.

But lawyers for the state contend those patients would continue to have access to a full array of medical services elsewhere.

Among the issues the judge must consider is whether an order to resume the payments would be in the public interest.

(AP) – A Kansas National Guard officer says future funding levels could affect the ability of the military to properly assist soldiers and families before, during and after deployments.

Maj. Robert Stinson on Monday briefed the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Kansas Security about programs and services for reserve soldiers, including access to mental health services. Most of the programs are funded through the federal Department of Defense.

Legislators were concerned about the coordination of programs and services and whether adequate access was in place for soldiers and families in rural areas.

Stinson said the Kansas National Guard was working with several partners, including the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, to make sure veterans were receiving information about services and access to care.

UPDATE: Investigators searched a creek near the Kansas City home where a baby was reported missing nearly two weeks ago.

Investigators also Monday brought tracking dogs to the yard of the home where the baby’s parents have been staying since they reported their 10-month-old daughter, Lisa Irwin, was missing. Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley called police early on Oct. 4 to say the baby had been abducted.

Kansas City police said a section of the creek behind the family’s home was diverted so investigators could get a better look. Investigators later brought dogs to the home of Jeremy Irwin’s parents searching for clues that might provide information about the baby’s disappearance.

Earlier Monday, Deborah Bradley reported on NBC’s Today show that she was drunk the night the baby was reported missing.

 

ORIGINAL STORY: The mother of a baby who went missing from her Kansas City home two weeks ago says she was drunk when the girl disappeared.

Deborah Bradley told NBC’s “Today” show Monday that the night her baby, Lisa Irwin, disappeared she had bought wine and consumed “enough to be drunk.”

Bradley says police asked her if she killed Lisa, who was 10 months old when she disappeared Oct. 4. She says she doesn’t “think alcohol changes a person enough to do something like that.”

She says she fears being arrested because then the search for Lisa will end and she will “never know what happened.”

Hundreds of state and federal law enforcement officers have been involved in the search for Lisa, but have turned up no evidence pointing to her whereabouts.

(AP) – Kansas Lottery retailers blame the down economy and statewide smoking ban for flat lottery sales at a time when other states are reporting big increases.

The Lottery’s new executive director says the emergence of state-owned casinos could further erode lottery sales. Dennis Wilson told The Wichita Eagle that sales fell about $500,000 in Ford County after the Boot Hill Casino & Resort in Dodge City opened last year.

An analysis by USA Today found that 28 of 41 state lotteries saw higher sales in the fiscal year that ended June 30. Seventeen of those set records, including Missouri, which hit $1 billion in sales for the first time.

Wilson says the Lottery has about 1,800 outlets now and he wants to add 100 in the next year.