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Victim identified in Fort Dodge fatal shooting

May 18, 2009 By

Police have identified the victim of a fatal shooting Sunday in Fort Dodge. Investigators say 42-year-old Rachelle Vega was shot by her husband. Twenty-nine-year-old Angel Dejesus Vega-Sanchez is charged with first-degree murder and is being held in the Webster County Jail under a bond of one million dollars.

The shooting was reported at 4:14 Sunday morning at 1323 Fifth Avenue South in Fort Dodge. The caller indicated that Rachelle Vega had been shot. Vega was taken by ambulance to Trinity Regional Medical Center where she was pronounced dead a short time later. Police have also arrested 25-year-old Mario Isai Jimenez as a material witness in the case.

His bond is set at $500,000. There’s no word yet on the motive or what happened prior to the shooting.

 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Eastern Iowa student confirmed with bacterial meningitis

May 18, 2009 By

State officials say a case of bacterial meningitis has been confirmed in a student at Linn-Mar High School in Marion. State epidemiologist, Patricia Quinlisk, says the disease is spread by direct contact with saliva.

Quinlisk says only about one or two percent of the people who have that contact with a person through kissing or sharing a drink or something like that will get bacterial meningitis. But she says it’s a "very devastating" disease as around 15% of the people who contract it will die, even with good medical care.

And she says the disease can also have some very bad side effects such as deafness of the loss of a limb. Quinlisk says the health department just wants to be sure the disease wasn’t spread in some mass fashion. She says most of the people who are exposed are usually family members, and doctors who treat the person usually give antibiotics to the family.

Quinlisk says many people carry the bacteria around without every knowing it, and they aren’t sure why it then causes some to become sick. Dr. Quinlisk says the impact of the disease is something that shouldn’t be overlooked, and prevention is important for some groups.

Quinlisk says there is a vaccine that the health department recommends for young adults and some colleges require the vaccine to protect students from the disease. Sings of bacterial meningitis include: high fever, severe headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, and or a rash. A Sioux City high school student died in January from bacterial meningitis. Fifteen-year old Ashley Andreasen died at the hospital one-day after being diagnosed.

Filed Under: Education, Health & Medicine

Mortgage assistance for flood victims extended

May 18, 2009 By

Hundreds of Iowans whose homes were heavily damaged in last year’s flooding may be eligible for more state aid as they wait for possible buy-outs. The Iowa Finance Authority is extending the interim mortgage assistance program another six months.

Tina Potthoff , spokeswoman for the Rebuild Iowa Office, says this could benefit up to 600 homeowners in the state. "The interim mortgage assistance was developed to take away the burden of two mortgages, leaving an impacted homeowner with the responsibility for just one," Pothoff says. "What we’re discovering is that there are still Iowans out there struggling so we want to extend the interim mortgage assistance for them."

She says homeowners who qualify will continue to receive up to one-thousand dollars a month to cover their mortgage, property taxes or insurance. "We just want to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to keep people from, number one, foreclosing or, number two, being in a bad situation as they wait for a buyout to occur."

Potthoff says some of the 600 who originally qualified for the money may not be eligible for additional assistance if they’ve already moved back into their homes. The money for the extension comes from the state but has already been doled out to the local communities. It was part of a $54-million disaster aid package approved by the legislature in February. 

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Vaudt: I will not run for governor

May 18, 2009 By

State Auditor David Vaudt State Auditor Dave Vaudt, one of two Republicans who hold statewide office, says he will run for reelection rather than run for governor in 2010.

"Iowans of all types have asked me to consider running for governor. I’m flattered that Iowans would come forward and encourage me to run and I have seriously considered that over the last several months," Vaudt says.

 "As you’re aware, I am very concerned about Iowa’s long-term finances."

According to Vaudt, his "voice" that’s warning about impending financial disaster for the State of Iowa would be muted if he were to run for governor.

"And we’re at a point where Iowa needs to reverse course. We need to turn things around and start moving in the right direction," Vaudt says, "and I truly believe this is not going to happen unless Iowans have a clear picture of what’s really happening with our finances."

Vaudt held a budget briefing for reporters this afternoon in his statehouse office. Vaudt’s general conclusion is that Governor Chet Culver and his fellow Democrats in the legislature overspent and shouldn’t have borrowed as much as they did for infrastructure projects.

"There is a very huge cost to Iowans because of our short term thinking and taking the easy road rather than the best road," Vaudt said. Vaudt told reporters deciding against a run for governor hadn’t been an easy decision for him.

"It was a very difficult decision. I’m very, truly concerned about Iowa’s future," Vaudt said. "I have a great deal of love for Iowa. It’s where I was born and raised and I think we have great opportunities here, but I’m very discouraged with the way we’re handling Iowa’s finances."

Vaudt does not plan to endorse another Republican in the 2010 gubernatorial race. Chet Culver, a Democrat, has indicated he intends to seek a second term as governor. Vaudt, a certified public accountant by trade, was reluctant to say Culver’s chances of reelection were endangered by his record on spending.

"Whenever elected officials make decisions, they need to be able to justify their decisions and that’s what they’re going to have to do with the taxpayers," Vaudt told reporters.

Vaudt, who is 52 years old, won his first term as state auditor in 2002 and will be seeking a third term in 2010.

Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey, the other Republican who holds statewide office, has said he’ll decide this summer about a run for governor.  But Northey has indicated he is "leaning" toward a run for a second term as ag secretary.

Click on the audio link below to listen to Vaudt’s announcement, then to a question-and-answer session with reporters.  The longer, half-hour-long audio file includes the opening part of Vaudt’s news conference — before his campaign announcement.

AUDIO: Vaudt news conference…MP3 16 min.
AUDIO: entire news conference…MP3 29 min.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , ,

Pulitzer Prize winner urges Grinnell grads to be the "Re-Generation"

May 18, 2009 By

Thomas Friedman A best-selling author who’s won the Pulitzer Prize three times told the Grinnell College Class of 2009 they are the "Re-Generation."

Thomas Friedman addressed the graduates at this morning’s outdoor commencement.

"Yes, we need to go from the ‘Greatest Generation’ to the ‘Grasshopper Generation’ to the ‘Re-Generation,’" Friedman said. "That is your job, with our help of course, to regenerate, renew and refresh America. And you may not believe it, but the liberal arts education you received here has prepared you for this task in more ways than you might think."

Friedman followed his best-seller, "The World Is Flat," with another best-selling title: "Hot, Flat and Crowded." According to Friedman, imagination is the most important skill in this century.

"So if you are leaving this school with your imagination enriched and sharpened, you are leaving here with a lot more job-relevant skills than you may think. In fact, you’re leaving here with the most important skill you can have," Friedman said. "Because when the world if this flat — and it is, when there are this many distributed tools of innovation and connectivity, what you imagine is going to matter so much more because you can now act on your imagination as an individual so much farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before."

Friedman told the graduates their first task is to "restore…basic values of hard work and accountability," as Friedman argued those are the values which made America great.

"So whatever ethics you learned in Philosophy 101; whatever uncompromising idealism was spawned in you by a professor you so admired; whatever unbending convictions about what is right and wrong, black and white; what you stuck to in student government debates even though your cause seemed lost; whatever principled behavior you demanded from the administration here or from fellow students supporting the same cause –whatever you do, do not leave it here," Friedman said.

According to Friedman, some company somewhere will pay for those values. But if they won’t, Friedman urged the students to strike out on their own.

"We have to invent and innovate our way out of this crisis," he said. "We have to get away from just financial engineering, designing more and more exotic ways to make money for money and get back to real engineering of stuff — stuff and services that people need to make their lives more productive, more healthy, more environmentally-sound and more enjoyable."

Friedman, who is a New York Times columnist, received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Grinnell College.

 

Filed Under: Education

Twenty-eight nursing, assisted living facilities recieve perfect marks in state inspections

May 18, 2009 By

The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals says 28 nursing homes and assisted living programs in the state were found to be free of problems during inspections in March and April. Department spokesman, Mark Werning, says that’s about an average number of facilities that are usually found to be "defficiency-free."

Werning says "deficiency-free" facility is one that has no identifiable problems whatsoever. He says the problems range from misfiling paperwork to allowing a patient to leave and the patient is later injured. Werning says overall the inspections usually come out on a bell curve.

Werning says there’s approximately the same amount of facilities on the other end of those that have no problems, that have "very significant and serious problems that require an awful lot of attention from the department to address." Werning says the remaining facilities sit somewhere in the middle.

He says there is a wide range of deficiencies, from those that need corrective action immediately, but others that they will just check up on when they do the next inspection. Werning says they do inspections of each facility once a year, unless there is a complaint.

The Department of Inspections and Appeals posts reports from all inspections conducted at nursing homes and assisted living programs on its Nursing Home Report Card website .

Here are the facilities that were recognized for being deficiency free:

Lincolnway Villa, Wheatland; Jackson County Senior Center; Maquoketa; Franken Manor, Sioux Center; Windsor Manor, Vinton; Waterford at Ames; Wellington Place, Decorah; Panora Assisted Living; Lamoni Assisted Living, Lamoni; Good Samaritan Society of Le Mars; Manor House Care Center, Sigourney; Behavioral Technologies Evans House, Pleasant Hill; Mosaic at 68th Street, Des Moines; Mosaic at E. 42nd Street, Des Moines;· Belmond I and Belmond II in Belmond; ChildServe Johnston Home; Richland Group Home, Waterloo; Beacon Hill Community Living Home, Dubuque;Bunker Hill Community Living Home, Dubuque; Concord Community Living Home, Dubuque; Kennedy Community Living Home, Dubuque; Maplewood Community Living Home, Dubuque;Solar Group Home, Waterloo; Duncan Heights, Inc., Garner; Genesis Medical Center, De Witt; Heritage Nursing Home, Bancroft; Wellington Place, Decorah; St. Francis Manor, Grinnell.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Government

Man killed in Sioux City accident

May 18, 2009 By

A pickup truck driver was killed in a head-on crash Sunday in Sioux City. A 62-year-old Castana man was killed in a two-vehicle mishap yesterday afternoon about 3 o’clock. Thomas Bloyer was driving south on Interstate 29 when he was hit by a northbound vehicle which had lost control, crossed the median and hit the pickup.

Bloyer was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the northbound car had minor injuries. The accident is still under investigation.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters
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