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Concert raises money for injured Cedar Rapids police officer

May 18, 2009 By

A concert was held in Cedar Rapids Sunday night to help the family of a police officer who’s recovering from an assault. The event included a surprise guest. Several organizations have held fundraisers for officer Tim Davis, who suffered a serious head injury in March.

The concert on Sunday was billed as "The Final Fundraiser" by Cedar Rapids Police Protective Association and the Cedar Rapids Police Auxiliary. Hundreds of people attended, including officer Davis. It was his first public appearance since the assault. Davis did not address the crowd and his family did not want to comment, but told reporters they’re grateful for all the help.

Cedar Rapids police officer Rod Schulte believes the incident has actually strengthened the community and the department. "It’s a tight knit group now," Shulte said. "Everybody’s willing to work with everyone else to try and curtail what’s going on in the city."

Seventeen-year-old Jose Rockiett is charged in the assault on Davis. Sunday’s concert raised nearly $8,000.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Human Interest

Des Moines police looking for suspects in fatal stabbing of teen

May 18, 2009 By

Police in Iowa’s largest city are investigating their first murder of the year. Officers say the Des Moines boy was stabbed at a house party on Saturday night and died a short time later at a capitol city hospital.

The victim is identified as 16-year-old Eduardo Marquez, who was a sophomore at Des Moines East High School and a varsity soccer player. Investigators say they’ve made no arrests and have no suspects.

 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

New, clearer rules for dissolving Iowa school districts

May 18, 2009 By

A new state law creates a clearer exit strategy the next time the Iowa Department of Education orders that an Iowa school be shut down.

The new law addresses some technical problems that arose last year when the Russell Community School District in southcentral Iowa lost its accreditation, but Carol Greta, an attorney for the Department of Education, says the new law does not make it easier for the state to decommission a school.

"Not only was that not the intent, but there is absolutely no language in this bill that will accomplish that," Greta says. "So the reasons for removing accreditation have not been changed."

State officials began their review of the Russell district when a half-a-million dollar budget deficit was reported. Officials found inadequate course offerings and 43 percent of the students who lived within the Russell district had opted to use "open enrollment" in order to attend a neighboring school district.

Greta says when the state ordered the school shut down in 2008, there was no clear exit strategy.

"The law did not address such things as who has the authority to transfer property formerly owned by the district, who has authority to file year-end reports that are still mandatory even though the school district no longer exists as a corporate entity," Greta says.

According to Greta, since state standards were established, state officials have ordered just two school districts to shut down because they failed to meet those standards.

 

Filed Under: Education, Politics & Government Tagged With:

UNI women’s rugby team ranked among the best

May 18, 2009 By

It may not be a varsity sport at the school but the University of Northern Iowa women’s rugby team is ranked amongst the best in the country. UNI finished ninth in the final poll from this past season and regularly competes against some of the biggest schools in the country.

Steve Murra directs the club program at UNI and says they’ve played the likes of BYU at nationals, Dartmouth. Last year they played Stanford, Air Force and Texas A&M.

Mura has a lot of success over the years, even though he does not recruit rugby players. He finds players from the incoming freshman class each year. Mura says there are eight summer sessions of orientation and they set up a table and recruit players there, and also go to softball and volleyball games and intramural sports looking for players.

Murra says he looks for athletes who played other sports at the high school level. He says most of them haven’t played rugby and are apprehensive, and he says usually the moms are more apprehensive than the dads.

Murra says they play a split season in the fall and spring and this season concluded with a trip to the National Sweet 16 tournament. He says they raised money in the offseason to fund the trip. This past season was the most successful in the program’s history. 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

Special effort underway to encourage seatbelt use

May 18, 2009 By

Iowa law officers begin a two week "Click it or Ticket" program today focused on getting people to use their seatbelts. The Bureau Chief for the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, Larry Sauer, says Iowa has been a leader in buckling up, but there is still room for improvement.

He says Iowa is at about 93% seatbelt usage, and they are happy with that rate, but they’d still like to see more people buckling up. Sauer says no buckling up can be a fatal mistake. Sauer says over 170 people not wearing a seatbelt died in crashes in Iowa.

He says in 2007 there were 180 who died who were not wearing seatbelts, but he says there can still be improvement. Sauer says people are killed in crashes in Iowa at the rate of one per day.

Sauer says the "Click it or Ticket" program is starting this week to make people aware before the big Memorial Day holiday. Sauer says there will be extra officers out all across the state on the local, state and county level, as those agency use federal money to put the officers on patrol. Sauer says they also plan to target hours where there have been problems.

Sauer says there were 111 people killed in drunken driving crashes, and 67% of those deaths occurred between the hours of nine p.m. and three A.M. So he says 25% of the time resulted in two-thirds of the alcohol related traffic deaths. Saur says you can avoid problems by simply using your seatbelt and not using alcohol while driving.  

Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With:

Parkersburg prepares for one year anniversary of deadly tornado

May 18, 2009 By

Next Monday will be a poignant Memorial Day for the town of Parkersburg as residents remember the massive tornado that struck on that day, May 25th, one year before.

The mile-wide twister also hit New Hartford, killing a total of eight people and injuring dozens. In the past year, Parkersburg Police Chief Chris Luhring says the town focused on becoming a national role model for community development and disaster preparedness.

There were so-called experts who said Parkersburg would never recover and Chief Luhring says: "Those in Parkersburg and those in Iowa, we’re pretty resilient and we know when we say something we’re going to keep our commitments. We focused on getting people back into their businesses and back in their houses and doing it in the right way."

Luhring says the townspeople wouldn’t let the nay-sayers dictate what could and couldn’t be done. "Parkersburg has taken on lots of different projects," he says. "One of the main things we did was form a long-term recovery committee that highlighted certain projects that needed to be done as a community."

He says they worked hard at helping individuals and families to rebuild their lives as quickly as possible. Luhring says the community owes a tremendous debt to the thousands of people who streamed in to offer assistance of all sorts after the monster storm and tornado.

"When some towns rebuild, that town becomes the focus, but all of Iowa literally came to help Parkersburg," he says. "(The tornado) happened to happen before the floods and they just devastated our entire state, on top of the tornadoes. But it’s an all-of-Iowa solution and it’s amazing to see how everybody came together."

Luhring says the community is asking that the people from across Iowa who helped Parkersburg to recover return to the town during Memorial Day weekend to see the difference they helped to make.

"Just to allow people to see the changes that have taken place, to allow people to see the hand that they had in our recovery is one of our main goals," Luhring says. "Anybody that came as a volunteer, firefighters, medics, National Guardsmen and women, police officers, churches — just come back to see what we’ve accomplished."

A host of events are planned during the holiday weekend: a fishing tournament, a dance, a community concert, a playground dedication and a memorial service on Monday where Governor Culver will speak. That service is expected to end at 4:59 P.M. with the tolling of church bells to remember the time when the killer twister hit. For more information, see the Parkersburg website .

 

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Winterset man faces attempted murder charge

May 18, 2009 By

Madison County authorities have made an arrest in connection with stabbing early Sunday morning in Winterset. According to Winterset Police, Brian Richmond, of Winterset faces a charge of attempted murder.

The Madison County Sheriff’s Department received a 9-1-1 call at around 3:20 AM Sunday indicating someone had been stabbed at a residence on North 5th Street in Winterset.

The unidentified victim was flown by helicopter to Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines. The case remains under investigation by the Winterset Police Department and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts
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