Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 117
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A missing emergency room doctor from Missouri was found dead in Arkansas from an apparent gunshot wound, authorities confirmed Wednesday, but they're still investigating what happened in the week since he was last seen. A kayaker discovered the body of 49-year-old Dr. John Forsyth on Tuesday in Beaver Lake, a large reservoir in northwestern Arkansas, the Benton County Sheriff's Office said. No further information would immediately be released, authorities said, and they didn't specify if he was shot by someone else or if...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City Council committee will consider a resolution on Wednesday that would designate the city as a sanctuary for people seeking or providing gender-affirming care, even as the state's attorney general is proposing a new restrictions on the procedures for adults and children. The resolution, which was proposed by LGTBQ advocates in Kansas City, says the city will not prosecute or fine any person or organization that seeks, provides, receives or helps someone receive gender-affirming care such as as puberty b...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — As 16-year-old Ralph Yarl struggled to come to grips with being shot for going to the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers, the white Kansas City, Missouri, homeowner who shot the Black teenager turned himself in on Tuesday. Andrew Lester, 84, surrendered at the Clay County Detention Center a day after being charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. Some civil rights leaders urged a hate crime charge but Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson said first-degree assault is a h...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — An 85-year-old white man who shot a Black teen at his front door in Kansas City, Missouri, last week has been charged with armed assault, and the Clay County prosecutor said Monday there was a racial component to the case. Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson said at a news conference that Andrew Lester shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who is recovering at home after being released from the hospital on Sunday. When asked if anything was said between Lester and Yarl that made Thompson believe the shooting was racially m...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Fans lined up Wednesday to get a prime spot in downtown Kansas City as the city celebrates the Kansas City Chiefs' second Super Bowl championship in four NFL seasons. Chiefs coach Andy Reid and Super Bowl MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes were riding in double-decker buses, joined by teammates, family and Chiefs officials, in front of fans standing up to 10 people deep as the parade rolled down a main downtown street on the way to a rally at Union Station. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt stood in one of the buses holding the L...
Federal prosecutors say a Kansas police detective and three other men ran a violent sex trafficking operation that targeted troubled teenage girls at an apartment complex in Kansas City, Kansas, in the 1990s. Former detective Roger Golubski, who has been accused of preying on Black women and girls for decades while he was a Kansas City, Kansas, officer, was one of the men charged in a grand jury indictment unsealed Monday. Golubski, Cecil Brooks, Lemark Roberson and Richard Robinson were charged with conspiracy against rights and two counts of...
The Kansas State Board of Education on Thursday recommended that the state's public school districts eliminate Native American mascots and branding to reduce their harmful impacts on students. The board approved a motion making a "strong recommendation" that Kansas public K-12 nontribal schools retire Native American-themed mascots and branding as soon as possible but within the next three to five years at the latest. Supporters stressed the board's action was only a recommendation and the final decision on mascots was left to local school...
A plan to search for unmarked graves at a former Native American boarding school in Kansas is on hold amid a disagreement between a Shawnee Tribe and state and city officials overseeing the site. The Kansas Historical Society announced last year that the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas would conduct a ground-penetrating radar survey at the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway. However, Fairway officials last week said the proposal was on hold indefinitely after Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes raised concerns that the tribe was...
A federal judge on Tuesday threw out three of four convictions against a Kansas researcher accused of illegally concealing work he was doing at a Chinese university while working at the University of Kansas, leaving only a conviction for making a false statement on a form. A jury convicted researcher Feng "Franklin" Tao in April on three counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements. He was accused of not disclosing that he was working for Fuzhou University in China while employed at the Kansas university. However, U.S. District Judge...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas police detective accused of preying on Black women and girls for decades will be released from jail pending his trial on charges involving two accusers who say he repeatedly sexually abused them, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S Magistrate Judge Rachel Schwartz acknowledged the allegations against Roger Golubski represented "reprehensible conduct" and the underlying facts were "shocking," but said he is not as much of risk as he would have been when the alleged crimes occurred. Prosecutors had also argued th...
Sports fans who want to bet on their favorite teams should be able to make their wagers in Kansas beginning Sept. 1 if some final regulatory details are worked out, state officials announced Thursday. The four state-owned casinos in Kansas will have a tentative "soft launch" of sports betting at noon Sept. 1, with an official launch on Sept. 8, Kansas Lottery executive director Stephen Durrell said in a video announcement. Durrell said several regulatory and administrative hurdles remained to make the launch a reality "but we're hopeful we can...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man has been charged with shooting and killing his neighbor following an argument over lawn mowing, bringing to an end years of hostility between the two, officials said. Samuel Avery, 42, of Kansas City, was charged Monday with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the killing of 41-year-old Warner Trotter, who was shot in his head on his front porch, the Jackson County Prosecutor's office said. Trotter was declared dead at hospital. According to court documents, Avery called police on Sunday t...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas on Tuesday was holding the nation's first test of voter feelings about the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, with people throughout the state deciding whether to allow their conservative Legislature to further restrict or ban abortion. The referendum on the proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution is being closely watched as a barometer of liberal and moderate voters' anger over the June ruling overturning the nationwide right to abortion. But the outcome might not reflect b...
A school resource officer who shot and wounded a Kansas high school student after the student shot him four times won't face charges because he believed his life was in danger, a prosecutor announced Friday. Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said school resource officer Erik Clark shot Jaylon Elmore at Olathe East High School after Elmore shot him four times inside an assistant principal's office on March 4. An assistant principal, Kaleb Stoppel, was shot and wounded during the exchange, "most likely" by two bullets fired by Clark,...
LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — A man who runs a little-known, low-budget radio station in suburban Kansas City says he is standing up for free speech and alternative viewpoints when he airs Russian state-sponsored programming in the midst of the Ukrainian war. Radio Sputnik, funded by the Russian government, pays broadcast companies in the U.S. to air its programs. Only two do so: One is Peter Schartel's company in Liberty, Missouri, and one is in Washington, D.C. Schartel started airing the Russian programming in January 2020, but criticism i...
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A police affidavit released Wednesday says a student at a Kansas high school began shooting after an administrator and school resource officer demanded to search his backpack because of rumors the student had a gun. The student, 18-year-old Jaylon Desean Elmore, fired five shots toward the school resource officer at Olathe East High School on March 4 before he was shot by the officer and subdued by the assistant principal, according to the affidavit. Elmore's "ghost gun," was loaded with 13 9 mm rounds but a spent round b...
A Kansas middle school teacher who was disciplined for refusing to use a student's preferred first name and gender pronouns is suing the school district. Fort Riley Middle School math teacher Pamela Ricard said in a federal lawsuit filed Monday that the Geary County School District violated her constitutional rights and did not accommodate her Christian beliefs when it suspended her for three days. Attorney Mark Edwards said the district would have no comment on the lawsuit. The school is located in Fort Riley, a U.S. Army base that's 130...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A former Kansas City police detective was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for fatally shooting a Black man who was backing a pickup truck into a garage, but he will remain free on bond while his conviction is appealed. Eric DeValkenaere, 43, was convicted in November of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in the death of 26-year-old Cameron Lamb on Dec. 3, 2019. Jackson County Circuit Court Presiding Judge J. Dale Youngs sentenced DeValkenaere, who is white, to three years for i...
Hospital and health officials across Missouri sounded the alarm Wednesday over sharply increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases, with some saying they are seeing more confirmed cases than at any time since the coronavirus pandemic began. Leaders of Kansas City-area hospitals said in a phone conference that they are trying to treat the patients and respond to an intense demand for COVID-19 testing while also facing staffing shortages. Dr. Mark Steele, executive chief clinical officer at University Health, said the system's two hospitals in the...
Two men have died from injuries suffered in wildfires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres across Kansas this week, authorities said Friday. Richard Shimanek, 84, a farmer and rancher who lived near Leoti, died Thursday night at a hospital in Denver, Leoti Mayor and Fire Chief Charlie Hughes said. He was outside his home trying to fight the fire Wednesday when he fell and couldn't get up, Hughes said. The Ellis County sheriff's office said Friday that the remains of Derrick Kelley, 36, were found near his burned vehicle in a rural...
A Kansas City man who has been jailed for more than 40 years for three murders was wrongfully convicted in 1979 and will be released, a Missouri judge ruled Tuesday. Kevin Strickland, 62, has always maintained that he was home watching television and had nothing to do with the killings, which happened when he was 18 years old. Judge James Welsh, a retired Missouri Court of Appeals judge, ruled after a three-day evidentiary hearing requested by a Jackson County prosecutor who said evidence used to convict Strickland in 1979 had since been...
LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — A judge's decision on Tuesday to release longtime inmate Kevin Strickland, of Kansas City, was made possible by a new Missouri law intended to free people who were imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit. Strickland, 62, was convicted in 1979 of a triple murder in Kansas City. He always maintained that he wasn't he wasn't at the crime scene, and Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced in May that her office's review of case convinced her that Strickland was telling the truth. After the Missouri Supreme C...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City man who has been jailed for more than 40 years for a triple murder adamantly and repeatedly denied having anything to do with the crime during testimony Monday in an evidentiary hearing that could lead to his freedom. "I had absolutely nothing to do with these murders. By no means was I anywhere close to that crime scene," said Kevin Strickland, who said he has been working toward his freedom since he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1979. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and o...
A Kansas woman who used a 134-year-old state law to convene a citizen grand jury after a prosecutor declined to file rape charges against a man she accused of attacking her said Wednesday she was angry but not surprised that jurors didn't bring charges in the case. Madison Smith, 23, of McPherson, gathered hundreds of signatures to empanel the grand jury after she said a fellow student at Bethany College slapped and strangled her during a sexual encounter in his dorm room in February 2018. The student, Jared Stolzenburg, was sentenced to two...
LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — All judges in the 16th Judicial District based in Jackson County will be prohibited from presiding over an evidentiary hearing that could determine whether a Kansas City man would be exonerated in a triple murder committed more than 40 years ago, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Thursday. The ruling came in the case of Kevin Strickland, 62, who was scheduled to have an evidentiary hearing next week to determine if he would be freed, after Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters-Baker announced in May that new evidence i...
