Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 221
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The homes of Kansas City Chiefs' quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce were broken into within days of each other last month, law enforcement reports show. "Obviously it's frustrating, disappointing," Mahomes said before practice on Wednesday. The break-ins, which were first reported by TMZ, happened just before and the day of the Chiefs' 26-13 home victory over the New Orleans Saints on Oct. 7, as Kelce's superstar girlfriend Taylor Swift watched from the stands. No injuries were reported in either c...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Outdoor conditioning while a heat advisory was in effect during the humid summer left 15-year-old football player Ovet Gomez Regalado pale and asking for water. After a 15-minute exercise, he collapsed as he walked to a building at his suburban Kansas City high school and died two days later of heatstroke, the medical examiner's office wrote this month in a report that followed a weekslong investigation. That makes Regalado the latest in a series of teen football players to succumb to heat-related illnesses during s...
Tropical Storm Helene formed Tuesday in the Caribbean Sea and could strengthen into a major hurricane while moving north toward the U.S., forecasters said. Heavy rains and big waves already lashed the Cayman Islands, and some Florida residents began to evacuate or fill sandbags ahead of anticipated flooding. Helene was expected to strengthen into a hurricane on Wednesday, and it could become a major hurricane before it arrives on Florida's Gulf Coast as soon as late Thursday. The storm was 145 miles (235 kilometers) south of the western tip of...
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — An enormous Hurricane Helene swamped parts of Mexico on Wednesday as it churned on a path forecasters said would take it to Florida as a major storm with a surge that could swallow entire homes, a chilling warning that sent residents scrambling for higher ground, closed schools, and led to states of emergency throughout the Southeast. The storm's center was about 110 miles (175 kilometers) northeast of Cozumel, Mexico, on Wednesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and Helene was expected to intensify and g...
PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — The Rev. Anthony Navaratnam stood before his congregation and urged them to pray for the women from surrounding states who will flock to the new abortion clinic in town that opened in August. "God is giving us an opportunity to be missionaries in Pittsburg, Kansas," he told those at Flag Church, which hosted a training on how to protest outside of the clinic. The debate over reproductive rights has landed in this college town of 20,000 in the southeast corner of one of the few states left in the region still allowing abor...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — An inmate whose escape from a Kansas prison hidden in a dog crate became the subject of a book and TV movie has died behind bars. John Manard, who was 45, died Sunday at the La Palma Correctional Facility, a private prison in Eloy, Arizona, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections. His cause of death is pending the result of an autopsy, department spokesperson Jennifer King said. Manard was serving a life sentence for a suburban Kansas City killing at a prison in Lansing, Kansas, when he met Toby Young, a married m...
An employee of a rural Kansas school district repeatedly shoved a teenager with Down syndrome into a utility closet, hit the boy and once photographed him locked in a cage used to store athletic equipment, a lawsuit claims. The suit filed Friday in federal court said the paraprofessional assigned to the 15-year-old sent the photo to staff in the Kaw Valley district, comparing the teen to an animal and "making light of his serious, demeaning and discriminatory conduct." The teen's parents alleged in the suit that the paraprofessional did not...
Emergency crews have rescued a terrified and screaming toddler after he fell into a narrow pipe and got stuck around a dozen feet (about 3.7 meters) below ground in the yard of his Kansas home. "There we go," Officer Ronnie Wagner of the Moundridge Police Department can be heard saying on body camera video, clearly relieved, as crews pulled the uninjured 14-month-old boy from the hole Sunday. "All right." Wagner had arrived at the home just 15 minutes earlier. The toddler was sobbing as his father yelled into the hole, "Hey buddy. We are going...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — A woman who was denied an abortion at a Kansas hospital after suffering a pregnancy complication that her attorneys say put her at risk of sepsis and even death is suing in a case that already prompted a federal investigation. Mylissa Farmer, of Joplin, Missouri, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against the University of Kansas Health System and the public oversight body that governs its operations. Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor and provide a medical t...
Decades of snuffing out fires at the first sign of smoke combined with climate change have laid the groundwork for a massive wildfire in northern California and scores of smaller ones across the western U.S. and Canada, experts say. These fires are moving faster and are harder to fight than those in the past. The only way to stop future wildfires from becoming so ferocious is to use smaller controlled fires, as indigenous people did for centuries, experts say. But they acknowledge that change won't be easy. Here are some things to know about...
CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court has cleared the way for the release of a Missouri woman whose murder conviction was overturned after she served 43 years in prison, but she still remained in custody as of Thursday evening. A circuit court judge ruled last month that Sandra Hemme's attorneys showed evidence of her "actual innocence," and an appeals court ruled she should be freed while her case is reviewed. But Hemme's immediate freedom has been complicated by lengthy sentences she received for crimes she committed while b...
A judge has overturned the conviction of a Missouri woman who was a psychiatric patient when she incriminated herself in a 1980 killing that her attorneys argue was actually committed by a now-discredited police officer. Judge Ryan Horsman ruled late Friday that Sandra Hemme, who has spent 43 years behind bars, had established evidence of actual innocence and must be freed within 30 days unless prosecutors retry her. He said her trial counsel was ineffective and prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that would have helped her. Her attorneys...
A Kansas women's health clinic that has often served as an epicenter of conflict over abortion rights has temporarily stopped offering the procedure, exasperating a strain on services in one of the few states in the region still allowing abortions. The move this week at the Trust Women clinic in Wichita followed a leadership shakeup that was outlined in an article published Thursday by the reproductive rights-focused publication Rewire News Group. Trust Women's board acknowledged what it described as a "leadership transition" in a statement...
A Kansas judge on Monday denied a request for a resentencing hearing for two brothers awaiting execution for a quadruple killing known as the "Wichita massacre," ruling that he lacks jurisdiction to approve a reexamination of the sentences. The legal setback was the latest for Jonathan Carr, 44, and Reginald Carr, 46. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to request a formal resentencing hearing, a decision that came a little less than a year after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the two brothers had received fair trials and upheld...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A two-week search for two missing Kansas women came to a fatal end last weekend when Oklahoma authorities confirmed the two were dead and announced the arrests of four people who allegedly belonged to an anti-government group that called themselves "God's Misfits." Veronica Butler, 27, and Jilian Kelley, 39, of Hugoton, Kansas, disappeared on March 30 while driving to pick up Butler's two children for a birthday party. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed on Tuesday that the bodies found in Texas County w...
An escaped mountain goat that somehow got stuck under a Kansas City bridge has survived a rocky rescue effort and now may be reunited with the owners who suspect he was stolen from their farm two months ago. "It's the story that captured the hearts of Kansas City," said Tori Fugate, of the KC Pet Project, a nonprofit that handles animal control for the city and operates shelters. "Forget a solar eclipse. We were on goat watch." After Monday's eclipse, people spotted the animal, believed to be a missing goat named Chug, hopping around on the...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — An actor who appeared in a spinoff of the popular television western "Yellowstone" was found dead after he went missing amid a domestic violence investigation in Kansas, authorities said Friday. The Johnson County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that deputies found the body of 27-year-old Cole Brings Plenty in a wooded area. Crime scene investigators and the medical examiner were at the location, but no details were released about a cause of death. Two days earlier Brings Plenty was charged in a nearby county with a...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — An office manager at a weekly newspaper in Kansas is the latest employee to sue over a police raid last year that sparked a firestorm. Cheri Bentz alleges in the suit filed Friday in federal court that she was unlawfully detained and interrogated, and had her cellphone seized. Two other employees, reporter Phyllis Zorn and former reporter Deb Gruver, sued previously over the Aug. 11 raid of the Marion County Record's newsroom. Police also searched the home of Publisher Eric Meyer that day, seizing equipment and personal c...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Stock up on groceries. Print off driving directions. And be very, very patient. Small towns and rural enclaves along the path of April's total solar eclipse are steeling for huge crowds of sun chasers who plan to catch a glimpse of day turning into dusk in North America. Tourism and community leaders in the path of totality from Texas to Maine have trucked in extra fuel and port-a-potties, and urged residents and visitors to be prepared. Some counties have issued disaster declarations to get extra help with policing and o...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — "Are you feeling good today, Chiefs Kingdom?" Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas shouted to a sea of football fans fresh from their town's third Super Bowl victory in five years. Less than an hour later — with music still blaring and the confetti of celebration still hanging in the air — the mayor and throngs of others were running from gunfire, unsure where it was coming from, desperately seeking safety. At its highest moment of community pride, Kansas City experienced one of 21st-century American culture's most traum...
BURNSVILLE, Minn. (AP) — A desperate call for help from a home in suburban Minneapolis early Sunday turned deadly for two police officers and a first responder who were shot and killed, according to officials. A suspect in the shooting also died, officials said. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said on Facebook that in addition to those killed, other officers were injured. The shootings took place in a suburban neighborhood in Burnsville, Minnesota, which was ringed with police cars that kept the press and public away from the scene where the shootings...
A 45-year-old man was arrested in the theft of a bronze Jackie Robinson statue that was cut off at the ankles and found days later smoldering in a trash can in a city park in Kansas, police announced Tuesday. Ricky Alderete was taken into custody earlier this month in a kidnapping case and charged Monday with four counts stemming from the theft and a 2022 case, records show. Wichita police Lt. Aaron Moses said there was no evidence it was a "hate-motivated crime" but rather the intent was to sell the metal for scrap. Wichita police Chief Joe Su...
Donations poured in Wednesday to replace a destroyed statue of Jackie Robinson on what would have been the 105th birthday of the first player to break Major League Baseball's color barrier. Major League Baseball pledged support. And the total raised just through one online fundraiser surpassed $145,000, which is far in excess of the estimated $75,000 value of the bronze statue that was cut from its base last week at a park in Wichita, Kansas. Police are searching for those responsible. Only the statue's feet were left at McAdams Park, where...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A romance that united sports and music fans, a celestial wonder that drew millions of eyes skyward and a spiritual homecoming for some Native American tribes were just some of the moments that inspired us and brought joy in 2023. In a year that saw multiple wars, deadly mass shootings, earthquakes, wildfires, sexual harassment stories and other tragedies, these events were among those that broke through the tumult of 2023 and made people feel hopeful. As Taylor Swift would say, "Hold on to the memories." Here are a f...
Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the Missouri woman who persuaded an online boyfriend to kill her mother after she had forced her to pretend for years that she was suffering from leukemia, muscular dystrophy and other serious illnesses, was released Thursday from prison on parole. Blanchard was released early in the day from the Chillicothe Correctional Center, said Karen Pojmann, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections. Blanchard was granted parole after serving 85% of her original sentence, Pojmann said. Blanchard's case sparked...
