SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a carjacking that left one man dead and have a suspect in custody.

Just after 2:30 a.m. Saturday, police responded to a carjacking call in the area of Lincoln and Woodlawn in Wichita, according to officer Charley Davidson.

Upon arrival, officers contacted 40-year-old Travis Shaw who had called 911. Police then located a 42-year-old male victim in the front yard of a residence in the 900 block of South Mission, underneath a 2006 white Chrysler 300 in critical condition. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene, according to Davidson.

Officers and investigators begin speaking with witnesses and reviewing evidence, which led them to arrest Shaw for one count of 2nd-degree murder.

This was not a random incident, and Shaw and the victim know each other, according to Davidson. Police have not released the victim’s name.

The will be presented to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — A 20-year-old Kansas City man has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after a man was thrown from his pickup truck while it swerved on Interstate 435.

Skylar Waddell is also charged with leaving the scene of an accident after the Wednesday death of 48-year-old Steven Norris.

Norris’ wife told police her husband’s truck was on the shoulder of the interstate because it had a flat tire. When a man took off in the truck, Norris clung to the bed rail. He fell from the truck when it swerved into the median, struck the cable barrier and crashed.

The truck driver, later identified by witnesses as Waddell, fled on foot and was later taken into custody.

Court records don’t name an attorney for Waddell.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas City-area lawmaker who made headlines by switching to the Democratic Party last year is seeking the state Senate seat of another lawmaker who did the same thing.

Four-term state Rep. Stephanie Clayton of Overland Park announced Friday that she would run next year for the seat held by Democratic state Sen. Barbara Bollier of Mission Hills.

Bollier is Democrats’ leading candidate for the U.S. Senate next year and is not seeking re-election to the Legislature.

Both Clayton and Bollier were elected as state lawmakers as moderate Republicans but switched parties in December. Clayton cited her dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump as a factor.

Clayton’s decision sets up a Democratic primary in Bollier’s district. Former Kansas Democratic Party Executive Director Ethan Corson of Fairway announced his candidacy in October.

KANSAS CITY,(AP) — President Donald Trump has announced plans to nominate the executive director the Kansas City Public Library to lead a little-known independent federal agency that the White House has tried to shutter.

Crosby Kemper III will become director of the Institute of Museum of Library Sciences, pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Trump’s federal budget proposals for the last three years have sought to close the agency, which has an annual budget of about $242 million. The agency is tasked with supporting the nation’s museums and libraries with research, policy and grants.

On Thursday, Kemper said he was under orders from the White House not to comment. The American Library Association and Republican U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt have praised Kemper’s nomination in written statements.

REPUBLIC COUNTY — Two people died in an accident just after 9:30a.m. Saturday in Republic County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2013 Volvo semi driven by Douglas J. Watts, 28, Omaha, was northbound on U.S. 81 at the U.S. 36 junction just west of Bellville.

The semi struck a 2004 Toyota Corolla driven by Steven A. Torres, 62, Bellville, that was westbound on U.S. 36 off ramp and had attempted to turn south onto U.S. 81.

Torres and a passenger Sherry L. Torres, 62, Bellville, were pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Bachelor-Surber Funeral Home. Watts was not transported for treatment.

All three were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

COWLEY COUNTY— Law enforcement authorities are investigating a  Kansas man on drug and weapons charges after a

On Friday, a 71-year-old Arkansas City man came to the police department and reported that his son, identified as 40-year-old Brian Feasel, who lives in his home, threatened him and his 71-year-old girlfriend Thursday night during an argument regarding drug usage. The victim reported that Feasel pointed a rifle at them both while also holding a handgun to his own head.

The victim reported they then left the residence and stayed at another location for the night. Officers obtained a search warrant for the residence, located in the 1400 block of North First Street.

Due to the nature of the crime and the suspect’s past violent history, the South Central Kansas SWAT team was called in to execute the search warrant and an arrest warrant for Feasel.

Just after 4 p.m. today, officers entered the North First Street residence and arrested Feasel without incident.

He is remains jailed on suspicion of two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, as well as one count each of criminal damage to property, criminal possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of drug paraphernalia and theft of a firearm.

He remains jailed in the Cowley County Jail in Winfield in lieu of $150,000 bond through

 

BY NOMIN UJIYEDIN
Kansas News Service

Attorneys for Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly have asked a federal court to remove her from a class-action lawsuit over the state’s troubled foster care program, arguing that she doesn’t actually oversee the system.

The move comes as parents and advocates say that the system continues to traumatize the thousands of children in its care.

A year ago, child welfare advocates sued then-Gov. Jeff Colyer and the heads of the state agencies in charge of the foster care system: the Department for Children and Families, the Department of Aging and Disability Services and the Department of Health and Environment. In April 2019, Kelly and the current heads of those agencies replaced them as the defendants in the suit.

The lawsuit alleges that the state failed to provide adequate mental health treatment for Kansas foster children and traumatized them by moving them from house to house, sometimes more than 100 times. The suit was filed on behalf of 10 foster children, who were identified only by their initials.

On Oct. 25, Kelly’s attorneys filed a motion in the U.S. District Court of Kansas, arguing that the governor is protected under the 11th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which provides states protection from many lawsuits by private citizens.

Kelly is not responsible for regulating the state’s foster care agencies, the attorneys argued, and is therefore immune from being sued over this issue.

“While Governor Kelly generally oversees her appointees’ administration of the foster care system,” the motion reads, “she does not enforce the statutes or regulations that control the Kansas foster care system.”

Instead, Kelly’s lawyers argued, the heads of state agencies are responsible for overseeing social welfare, mental health, medical care and other duties laid out in state law.

In an email, the governor’s office said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Attorneys for the children suing the state have until Dec. 30 to respond.

Teresa Woody, an attorney for advocacy group Kansas Appleseed, said they plan to file a response opposing the removal of Kelly from the lawsuit.

“It’s not at all uncommon to name the governor in a case like this,” Woody said. “The ultimate responsibility for the executive branch of the state rests with the governor.”

The judge will make the final decision to remove Kelly as a defendant, and it’s not clear when that might happen.

Woody said both sides of the case met Tuesday for mediation.

The governor has previously said she wants to prioritize fixing foster care during her time in office. While she was a state senator, Kelly served on a task force examining the foster care system.

Nomin Ujiyediin reports on criminal justice and social welfare for the Kansas News Service.  Follow her on Twitter @NominUJ or email nomin@kcur.org. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has proposed making it tougher for asylum-seekers to obtain permission to work in the United States while their cases are pending, a move that immigrant advocates say would unfairly punish those who need humanitarian protection the most.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said this week a proposed rule would double the time asylum-seekers must wait for a work permit to a year and bar those who crossed a border illegally from applying for work permits at all.

The new rule aims to discourage immigrants who don’t qualify for asylum from seeking it to “restore integrity to the asylum system and lessen the incentive to file an asylum application for the primary purpose of obtaining work authorization,” Ken Cuccinelli, the agency’s acting director, said in a statement.

The proposal is the latest in a series of measures by the Trump administration aimed at deterring immigrants from seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border and in limiting immigration to the United States.

There are hundreds of thousands of asylum applications pending in U.S. government offices and immigration courts. Some were filed by immigrants who were already in the country and others by people arriving in airports, at ports of entry, or stopped on the U.S-Mexico border.

Currently, asylum-seekers can obtain permission to work in the United States once their cases have been pending for six months.

Immigrant advocates decried the proposed rule and said it would fall hardest on the poorest and most vulnerable immigrants, who are often those who flee their homes at a moment’s notice in search of safety.

“Those with strongest claims are the ones least likely to be able to support themselves because they had to leave everything behind,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First, said asylum-seekers often struggle to feed and house themselves and their families during the current six-month wait period. Making that longer, she said, would worsen their lot and place an additional burden on their communities.

The public can comment on the proposed rule until Jan. 13.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — A former Lee’s Summit police officer has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison without parole for robbing a bank.

Richard Hagerty, of Independence, was sentenced Wednesday for armed bank robbery and brandishing a firearm during a violent crime.

Prosecutors say Hagerty robbed the Central Bank of Missouri in Lee’s Summit in August 2018. He pointed a gun at two tellers and stole about $7,000 before fleeing the bank on foot. Officers spotted him in a vehicle shortly after the robbery. A police pursuit that wound from Lee’s Summit to Grandview reached 100 mph as Hagerty drove on busy streets, through school zones and into oncoming traffic.

He was arrested without incident after the chase ended.

Hagerty was a police officer in Lee’s Summit from 2007 to 2016.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said Friday that he has “absolutely zero regrets” about moving the headquarters of two research agencies from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, despite continuing criticism that the move would harm agricultural research and make it less available to federal lawmakers.

Perdue joined political leaders from Missouri and Kansas in touring the new headquarters for the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food in Kansas City, Missouri, and to celebrate a move that he said would improve researchers work by placing them closer to farmers, colleges with agriculture experts and hundreds of private agribusinesses.

He said he was surprised by the opposition that erupted in Washington when the plan to move about 550 employees to Kansas City was announced in June, but he still believes it was the right decision.

“I thought we were doing the right thing and I am convinced today even more so having been here and seeing where we will be on the ground that we did the right thing,” Perdue said. “I applaud this decision, I celebrate this decision and I have absolutely zero regrets of beginning this process and finishing this process right here in Kansas City.”

Perdue praised the congressional delegations, governors and other leaders in Kansas and Missouri for working together to win a competition for the headquarters that originally drew 136 expressions of interest from around the country. He and others said the agencies will benefit from being closer to people with agricultural knowledge.

“There’s a certain culture here, and that influences your on-the-ground ability there, rather than sitting somewhere that doesn’t have any agriculture,” he said. “You’re going to find more people in this region that know about agriculture, have the challenges and stress of the year-in and year-out agriculture and be able to make decisions and policies that help inform better research and policy from the USDA.”

USDA economist Laura Dodson, acting vice president of the union that represents ERS employees, called the idea that moving to Kansas City would help the agencies’ agricultural research “patently ridiculous.”

“We do a national level of research,” she said. “Suggesting we could be better researchers seeing a single cornfield in one state is wrong. We are in service of national agriculture, we service all, not just one region or a specific few.”

The Economic Research Service examines issues including the rural economy, international trade, food safety and programs that provide food assistance to poor Americans. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture provides grants for agricultural research.

Dodson also said the move had devastated morale at the two agencies, where those who made the move are expected to do the same amount of work with far fewer employees. She used to work with 12 researchers, but her unit consists of her and one other worker.

Many agency employees refused to move to Missouri, raising concerns about finding qualified researchers to replace them. Perdue said a recent job fair for 107 vacant positions at the agency drew 6,000 applications, and he expects the agencies to be fully staffed during the first quarter of 2020. He rejected concerns about a loss of institutional memory after hundreds of employees chose not to move, saying those who moved to Kansas City would quickly train new hires.

Dodson predicted that the agency would have a difficult time filling highly specialized research jobs requiring difficult academic training. Even before the agencies moved from the nation’s capital, every job opening required a national search because “not many people can do what we do” and the pool of economists who could work at the agency is not deep, she said.

The USDA said Friday that as of the pay period ending Oct. 26, ERS has 30 employees in Kansas City, with 69 employees permanently remaining in Washington, D.C., while NIFA has 66 employees in Kansas City, with 18 employees remaining in Washington. ERS has 16 employees and NIFA has 15 employees in Kansas City-based positions whose relocation dates have been extended to Dec. 9 and March 30, 2020 respectively. In total, ERS has 122 positions occupied and NIFA has 92 positions occupied.

Both agencies also are using re-employed workers, short-term contractors and employees from other agencies “to help ensure mission continuity through the transition” and the USDA has well over 150 active recruitments in process between both agencies, the agency said.