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Harlan man charged with sexual abuse of a child

March 31, 2006 By

A western Iowa man is charged in a child sexual abuse case. Police say 38-year-old Larry Gittins Junior of Harlan was arrested this week for alleged sexual abuse of a six-year-old girl in Atlantic five years ago. According to reports, the girl — who is now eleven — made the allegations when she viewed an episode of a daytime talk show that addressed the issue of sexual abuse.

The girl’s parents contacted authorities after she told them what allegedly happened. Gittins is charged with second-degree sexual abuse. He’s being held in the Cass County Jail in Atlantic. A trial date has not yet been set.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Tornado touchdowns confirmed in Southwest Iowa

March 31, 2006 By

The National Weather Service confirmed a couple tornado touchdowns in southwest Iowa during last night’s storm, just a few miles west of Creston.

Union County Emergency Management coordinator Roger Nurnberg says so far he hasn’t found any damage in the rural areas of the county. He says nobody could find where it touched down, likely out in a field, but trained spotters reported it so he feel secure about it. And another that touched the west edge of Creston hit a neighborhood, and he saw that one himself, “so I know that was a tornado.”

Nurnberg says some trees and branches were downed by straight-line winds that came with the storm. One (of the twisters) on the west edge of town knocked a garage and breezeway off their foundation, and there was some damage to yard sheds, siding and shingles in that part of town. Nurnberg says the falling trees did damage, too.

Some lines were downed by tree limbs, as he notes “trees and power lines don’t really mix very well,” though power wasn’t out very long. The Creston Fire Department’s radio tower blew down, though there aren’t any other reports of serious damage in Creston or Union County so far.

A few dozen Des Moines-area houses are still without power after last night’s severe storms. A utility spokesman says nearly three-thousand central Iowans were in the dark at the peak of the lightning, tornadoes, heavy rain, hail and high winds. Allan Urlis, at MidAmerican Energy, urges people to phone their utility when their lights go out.

Urlis says it’s important to call in and report outages. Don’t assume someone else has called as he says the more information they have on the extent of the outage helps them identify the source and to dispatch crews accordingly. Urlis says not to worry about getting through. He says the call answering system has the capability of handling 108-thousand calls per hour, so they’ll never get a busy signal.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Weather

Missing West Union man found

March 31, 2006 By

A northeast Iowa man who was reported missing earlier this week has been located. Larry Ronnei was found by Waterloo police Thursday night.

The 56-year-old West Union man was on a shopping trip with his wife and friend Monday morning, when he stopped at a downtown Waterloo pawn shop to use the restroom, and disappeared. Waterloo police say Ronnei’s absence was voluntary and there is no further investigation pending.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Judge gives unique sentence in alcohol case

March 31, 2006 By

A judge this week sentenced a 25-year-old Orange City man to three-hundred days in jail for his role in the alcohol-poisoning death of a 16-year-old boy last June. Paul Ryan Van Beek pleaded guilty to supplying liquor to several teen guests at his parents’ home that night.

The judge says he studied the case thoroughly before ruling that Van Beek will spend 100 days in jail in each of the next three summers, and will give 13 presentations to young people on the dangers of alcohol. Sioux County Attorney Melissa O’Rourke says the sentence fits the crime. “The way (the judge) put together the sentence does assure that this particular defendant will think about this very seriously over the next three years,” O’Rourke says. “His next three summers will be spent in jail.”

She says Van Beek’s presentations should get the attention of young people, when he talks about the dangers they face with alcohol. “It’s very hard with young people,” O’Rourke says. “Everybody thinks it’s never going to happen to me, especially young people who think they are invincible in many ways.” The county attorney says while each crime is different, she would not be opposed to other creative sentences in the future.

If she had a similar case where an unorthodox sentence seemed to fit, O’Rourke says she’d look at it. She says she’s always tried to use “restorative justice” which can include terms of probation that implement not only punishment but also rehabilitation, restoration, and “healing in the community.” After 16-year-old Ryan Koenen was taken to an emergency room, doctors were unable to revive him. His blood-alcohol reading was point-three-four percent, more than four times the legal limit for drunk driving.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Man charged with impersonating a police officer

March 31, 2006 By

A man from east-central Iowa is charged with impersonating an officer. Kevin Hutchins of Palo was driving his car equipped with blue lights that identify him as a volunteer firefighter, when he spotted another driver making what he considered an improper lane-change on a suburban road on the southeast side of Iowa City.

Hutchins admits he turned on the blue lights on his car, pulled over the other motorist and spoke to her about her driving. She later called police, and he was charged with impersonating a public official. Only law-enforcement workers have authority to stop other drivers. After an initial court appearance Thursday morning, Hutchins was released on his own recognizance. He could face two years in jail and a fine of up to five-thousand dollars.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Legislator skeptical of statement on Braille School

March 31, 2006 By

Some state lawmakers are skeptical of a recent declaration that the Iowa Board of Regents will keep the state’s only school for the blind open. Though the board announced last week it has no intention of closing the school in Vinton, it didn’t convince Democratic Representative Dawn Pettengill of Mount Auburn.

Pettengill says one reason they wanted to close the school is that it has only 34 students right now, and costs 124-thousand dollars a student. She says if you limit admission to blind kids but bar those with multiple handicaps, it’ll cut the number who can attend to just a handful of children. She says doing that would starve it on the vine.

Pettengill is so convinced the Board of Regents will eventually close the school for the blind, she proposed an amendment that would have limited the board’s authority. Pettengill later withdrew the amendment, but defended the 150 year old school’s record. She says they learn life skills there, like cooking and shopping. The kids from the school walk to the store together and she says people in Vinton all greet and embrace the kids, and “they love them,” She says it would be a disservice to move them out so each lives alone in a community.

Board of Regents Executive Director Gary Steinke says they have no intention of closing the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School… but do want to make it more efficient. Of the four-million dollar appropriation for serving all blind children in the state, three-Million’s currently being used for 32 kids at the school, while the 500 other kids across the state split the rest. Steinke says “We have heard for quite some time from the parents of the blind kids across the state that their services are not what they should be.” He says there are changes contemplated.

Steinke says the cost of instruction at the school is less than the cost of heating, cooling and maintaining the buildings. The board plans to down by using only two of the buildings instead of the current six and save money that’s spent on maintenance to go instead to serve kids across the state. Steinke says the school was never intended to serve kids with multiple disabilities. The Iowa Braille and Sight-Saving School was founded in 1852.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With:

Iowa Democrats criticize Republican Nussle’s handling of budget

March 31, 2006 By

Iowa Democrats are again criticizing the way Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle is running the U.S. House Budget Committee. Nussle is chairman of that panel, and Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat, says this week Nussle engineered rejection of a spending plan that won bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate. “The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Jim Nussle, turned it down,” Harkin says. “Not only did he vote against it, (Nussle) marshalled his power as chairman to crush it on a straight party-line vote.”

Harkin says under Nussle’s leadership, the wealthy get more tax breaks and the nation’s budget deficit has grown so much that “our kids and grandkids will continue to pay interest on that national debt for the remainder of their lives.” That’s not the kind of fiscal track record Iowa’s next governor should have, according to Harkin.

Harkin says six years ago when President Clinton left the White House, the nation had the biggest federal budget surplus in history, but now — after six years with Nussle at the helm of the House Budget Committee — the nation has recorded the biggest federal deficit in history. “There’s political pain in being the budget chairman when you’ll do exactly what George Bush wants and that’s what Mr. Nussle’s doing,” Harkin says. “If he’s feeling pain, that’s his own fault.”

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Nussle’s gubernatorial campaign, says Harkin is grandstanding.”Today’s grandstanding isn’t surprising from a Democratic team who thinks leadership is a governor who spends the majority of his time campaigning for president, a lieutenant governor who seems to keep a permanent office at Democratic Party headquarters and a United States Senator who prefers Hollywood to Des Moines,” Comella says.

She says there’s ample evidence that Nussle has opposed the president on key issues important to Iowa. “The bottom line is Jim Nussle’s doing the job he was elected to do,” Comella says. For example, she cites Nussle’s rejection of cuts President Bush proposed in Medicaid.

Comella says Nussle also is trying to reinstate federal grants that Iowa police and sheriff’s departments have used to hire officers to work on drug cases. “He secured critical funding for Iowa law enforcement,” Comella says. Nussle said two years ago that he had no plans to step down as chairman of the House Budget Committee in order to focus on his campaign to become Iowa’s next governor.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , , ,
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