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Storm Lake Police arrest 13 for illegal gambling

July 22, 2009 By

More than a dozen residents of Storm Lake are facing charges in connection with a suspected illegal gambling operation. This week’s arrests follow the search of a Storm Lake home in June, when officers searched a home and seized gambling records, items used for gambling, a safe, over $10,000 cash and methamphetamine packaged for sale.

This week, the homeowner – 48-year-old Vinalanh Latsasombath – was charged with ongoing criminal conduct and illegal gaming and betting for allegedly running the operation. Thirty-nine-year-old Vilayphone Sibounma was charged with possession of meth with intent to deliver and misdemeanor illegal gambling. Another homeowner, 52-year-old Khonsavahn Southiphong, was arrested for allegedly keeping a gambling house. Ten other Storm Lake residents are charged with illegal gambling. The investigation is continuing.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With:

Iowa’s prison population drops

July 22, 2009 By

Iowa’s prison population has dropped by more than 350-inmates over the past two fiscal years. The Iowa Department of Corrections has released prison admission and release figures for fiscal 2009. They show Iowa prisons housed 8,455 inmates on June 30. That’s down from a record high of 8,840 in October 2007.

Iowa Corrections Research Director Lettie Prell told Radio Iowa earlier this month that one factor in the prison population decline is a shift in demographics. "Our prison population is not getting younger and more violent, it is getting older and sicker," Prell said.

When they’re released, Prell says those older convicted criminals are less likely to re-offend and return to prison. Prell has also noticed a significant drop in drug-related convictions.

She credits state laws passed earlier this decade targeting methamphetamine production. Long range forecasts call for Iowa’s prison population to once again reach record levels within a decade. Iowa lawmakers recently passed tougher sentencing standards for violent offenders and sex-offenders, forcing those inmates to serve longer prison terms.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Cedar Rapids man pleads guilty to sex abuse

July 22, 2009 By

A Cedar Rapids man has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a young girl. Sixty-four-year-old James Waldron pleaded guilty to indecent contact with a four-year-old girl his wife was babysitting.

His wife, Colleen Waldron, ran an in-home day care for about 21 years. She voluntarily closed the operation when her husband was arrested last year and, as part of the agreement with the court, she cannot reopen it. Police say the abuse happened several times in the course of about a year.

Waldron faces up to two years in prison. He’ll be sentenced in mid-September. Waldron, a former realtor, has been released on bond and told not to have contact with children under the age of 18.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Two teens charged in flood house fire in Cedar Rapids

July 22, 2009 By

Two teenagers have been arrested and charged with setting fire to a vacant house in Cedar Rapids. The home was damaged by last year’s flooding and has been vacant. Fire fighters were called to the home at about five o’clock on Friday, July 10th. They found a fire on the second floor of the home.

A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old on Tuesday were charged with second degree arson — a felony. Investigators say the two teens poured gasoline on mattresses in a bedroom and set them on fire.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Blind rider serves as inspiration for others

July 22, 2009 By

Clark Rachfal, Dave Swanson A team of bicyclists on this week’s RAGBRAI is pedaling across Iowa to raise awareness and research dollars for a rare disease that can cause blindness.

Joe Schmidt, from the University of Iowa’s division of opthalmology and visual sciences, says Team Project 3000 is educating people about what’s known as L-C-A.

"Clark Rachfal, who is a blind U.S. Paralympics cycling champion, is serving as our inspirational leader because he actually has been diagnosed with Leber congenital amaurosis," Schmidt says. "He and his sighted partner are riding on a tandem bike…to raise awareness for Project 3000 and they’re joined by about a dozen other riders."

Those other riders include medical researchers from the U-of-I and other volunteers and supporters of the effort. Schmidt says Project 3000 is an effort to find the estimated three-thousand people across the U.S. who have the affliction — and may not know it.

"LCA is a rare inherited eye disease that typically affects children or young adults, that causes them to progressively lose vision as they age," Schmidt says. "It typically strikes during infancy or childhood." Once the people — most likely children — are identified who have LCA, he says they can be offered important genetic testing through the U-of-I or wherever they may live.

Schmidt says, "That testing would allow for further research to be done and hopefully to identify the different genetic mutations that are responsible for the disease in their particular case, and will help contribute to different treatments that are on the horizon to be developed and offered to individuals."

More than $1.5 million in gifts has been raised through the U-of-I’s Foundation for Project 3000 since the project’s inception in 2006. To learn more, visit: "www.uifoundation.org/project3000".

 

Filed Under: Health & Medicine, Human Interest Tagged With:

Appeals Court upholds murder conviction of Waterloo woman

July 22, 2009 By

The Iowa Court of Appeals has upheld the life sentence of an eastern Iowa woman who was found guilty of first-degree murder as a teenager. Ruth Ann Veal was five weeks from her 15th birthday when police say she ran away from a juvenile home in Waterloo in June of 1993.

Officers chased Veal on foot and she fled into a Waterloo home where she hid until the owner, 66-year-old Catherine Haynes, returned home. Police say Veal then used a butcher knife to repeatedly stab Haynes, and also severely beat her until she eventually died.

Veal then used Haynes’ phone to call relatives and then spent two days driving to various locations in Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City making purchases by using cash, a checkbook, and credit cards stolen from Haynes’ purse.

Veal was eventually caught and a jury convicted her of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison. Veal appealed her case in 2008 based on a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that people under the age of 18 at the time of their crime could not be executed. A lower court ruled that Iowa does not have the death penalty so that U.S. Supreme Court ruling does not apply to Veal’s case — and Veal’s appeal did not come within three years as required by law.

The Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling, adding that the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled that those under age 16 could not be executed at the time Veal was convicted, and she could have raised the issue at that time and been within the time limit for filing an appeal. 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Class 1A: Thomas Weber, Mason City Newman

July 22, 2009 By

In three games the senior had eight hits in 12 at-bats. He had a home run, a double, a triple, drove in four runs and scored six times. Weber homered, drove in two runs and scored twice in a victory over Rockford. He was also perfect in three trips with a double, a triple and scored twice in a victory over Woden-Crystal Lake-Titonka.

Filed Under: INS Player of the Week, Uncategorized
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