LINN COUNTY — One person died in an accident just after 6:30p.m. Thursday in Linn County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2003 Cadillac CTS driven by Shawn Teagarden, 43, La Cygne, was northbound on County Road 1095 two miles west of La Cygne.

The driver failed to stop at the stop sign at the Kansas 152 junction and struck an embankment.

Teagarden was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Frontier Forensics. He was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.

SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are instigating an aggravated assault and have made an arrest.

Just after 3p.m. Wednesday, the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office Fugitive Warrant Unit attempted to locate a suspect for an arrest warrant at a residence in the 500 block of NE Emmett in Topeka, according to Sgt. Todd Stallbaumer.  The suspect identified as Luis Munoz-Yepez, 43, Topeka, crawled into a basement crawl space in the residence.

Three hours later, deputies arrested Munoz-Yepez without further incident.

He is being held in the Shawnee County Department of Corrections on an arrest warrant for aggravated assault, according to Stallbaumer.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A 77-year-old northeast Kansas man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for the attempted rape of a 4-year-old girl.

Galen Hurt, of Linwood, was sentenced Wednesday to 5.5 years in prison. He pleaded guilty in September in Leavenworth County to attempted rape and aggravated child endangerment.

Hurt was originally charged in 2018 with rape of a child after the girl told her mother that he had touched her inappropriately while she was at Hurt’s house.

Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson said he offered a plea deal to Hurt in part to prevent the girl, who is now 6, from having to testify in court.

KANSAS CITY — Authorities searching for a woman after finding her husband’s corpse in a freezer have her in custody, according to a social media report from police in Joplin Missouri.

Barbara J. Watters, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon with the assistance from the US Marshals Service.

Authorities found the corpse in the freezer in a bedroom inside Wattters’ southwest Missouri home where it may have been stored for nearly a year.

Details on charges have not been released.

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KANSAS CITY (AP) — Authorities are searching for a woman after finding her husband’s corpse in a freezer in a bedroom inside her southwest Missouri home, where it may have been stored for nearly a year.

Barbara Watters, 67, of Joplin, was charged Wednesday with abandonment of a corpse, a felony that is punishable by up to four years in prison.

The grim discovery was made after a witness told police that Paul Barton’s body had been in Watters’ freezer since his death on Dec. 30, 2018, a police officer wrote in the probable cause affidavit.

The witness said Watters threatened to kill him if he notified police. Watters also threatened to kill police, fireman and emergency medical workers if they attempted to come into her house, the witness said, according to the affidavit.

Police said she has unspecified “mental disorders” and is known to carry firearms.

Police released a photo of Watters and the license plate number for the white sedan she may be driving in a Facebook post that asked the public for help finding her. Capt. Nick Jimenez declined to elaborate further on the search.

Jimenez said in an interview that officers got the tip about the body Monday while investigating an unrelated Nov. 5 fire that damaged a home in the neighborhood. Officers served a search warrant Tuesday and found the body just where the witness said it would be.

Jimenez declined to describe how the witness knows Watters, although the affidavit said he was at her house on Nov. 7 when officers attempted to contact the occupants. The witness said Watters stood at the door pointing a handgun at officers on the other side and refused to allow him to answer the door.

The affidavit doesn’t explain why officers were at the house that day, and Jimenez said he didn’t know whether it was related to the arson inquiry.

Police weren’t immediately able to provide a call history to the home. The Associated Press submitted a records request.

Meanwhile, an autopsy is planned to determine the cause of death and confirm the identity of the remains. While the criminal complaint says Watters “knowingly disposed of or left” Barton’s corpse at her home without notifying law enforcement, Jimenez said formal identification of the body is pending.

Watters had only minor past convictions for driving with an expired license and operating a vehicle on a highway without a valid license, according to online court records in Missouri.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Two Kansas sheriff’s department employees have been charged over an incident with a jailed inmate, but no details have been released.

The Wyandotte County prosecutor’s office announced Thursday that 47-year-old Sgt. David Toland and 34-year-old Deputy Marcus Johnson are charged with one misdemeanor count of mistreatment of a confined person. Toland also is charged with felony aggravated battery and Johnson with misdemeanor assault. The Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office has placed both employees on administrative leave.

The prosecutor’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email asking whether the men have attorneys.

Toland also is a member of the Bonner Springs-Edwardsville school board. He told KCTV last month that about five jail staffers were involved in the September incident. He said he was working as a supervisor at the time and that the entire encounter was recorded on video. He said “what happened was right” but provided no other details.

Sheriff Don Ash also provided no specifics in a written statement but said it “does not reflect our organizational values.” The statement noted that an administrative investigation is ongoing

PAWNEE COUNTY– Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas man on sex crime allegations.

On Thursday, Michael Patrick Stacey, 19, Larned, Kansas, appeared in custody in Pawnee County and was charged with rape and battery, according to Pawnee CountyAttorney Doug McNett.  The crimes involve a single incident alleged to have occurred in Pawnee County on October 25, 2019.  The Larned Police Department handled the investigation.

If convicted, under the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines Stacey faces a presumptive prison sentence between 147 months and 653 months in the custody of the Department of Corrections depending on his criminal history.

Stacey was arrested on November 12, 2019, without incident and is being held in the custody of the Pawnee County Sheriff in lieu of $100,000 bond, according to McNett.

POTTAWATOMIE COUNTY— One person died in a fire at a home in Pottawatomie County Sunday, according to the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s office.

Just after 10:30p.m., fire crews responded to the home at 13910 Antelope Run Road in rural Westmoreland. The home had totally collapsed prior to the arrival of fire crews and deputies from the sheriff’s department.
Fire crews found a victim dead in the home, according to the State Fire Marshal’s office.

A positive identification of the victim will not be made until it is confirmed by autopsy.

The Investigation Division of the Fire Marshal’s office has classified the cause of the fire as undetermined. Loss is estimated at $200,000. It is unknown if there were smoke detectors in the structure.

By ROXANA HEGEMAN

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A scathing report following an independent investigation into the heatstroke death of a 19-year-old football player who collapsed after the first day of conditioning practice at a Kansas community college found “a striking lack of leadership.”

Braeden Bradforth, a 315-pound (140 kilogram) defensive lineman for the Garden City Community College, was found unconscious outside his dorm room after practice on Aug. 1, 2018. The New Jersey teenager died that night at a hospital.

No lawsuits have been filed in the case.

A serious lack of oversight set off a series of events that led to Bradforth’s death, according to the report by investigators, including sports medicine specialists Walters, Inc. School staff failed to assess athletes prior to the conditioning test and paid little attention to assessing Bradforth’s personal level of fitness, the report said.

In particular, coaching staff didn’t consider if he had properly acclimatized to working out in summer temperatures at a higher altitude.

“A cause of death was a poorly designed and administered conditioning test for an unconditioned, non-acclimatized student-athlete at an altitude with 9% less oxygen than he was accustomed to at his home” in Neptune, New Jersey, the report said.

The college was not sufficiently prepared to ensure safety at practice or to deal with exertional heat illness, the report said. No college athletic training or coaching staff member and no emergency medical service or hospital emergency department personnel identified or treated Bradforth’s escalating symptoms of the heat stroke that caused his death, it found.

A timeline included in the report detailed the 73 minutes that passed from the moment Bradforth left the stadium to his arrival at the hospital.

“An effective plan likely would have rescued him from what turned out to be his untimely death,” the report said. “The response time and significant delays between multiple opportunities for effective treatment were a cause of death.”

Teammates found Bradforth collapsed in an alley, according to emails obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request.

Assistant football coach Caleb Young told officials Bradforth was “making a stressful moan” when he arrived on the scene, but rather than immediately dial 911 he called the head coach Jeff Sims “for instruction to see how we wanted to handle the situation.”

Young wrote in one email to university officials that while he was on the phone with Sims, players were filling jugs and bottles from drinking fountains to pour water on Bradforth and attempt to make him drink.

The college hired the investigators to conduct an independent review of the case under pressure from Bradforth’s family and the New Jersey congressional delegation. The University of Maryland also hired Walters, Inc., after the heatstroke death of offensive lineman Jordan McNair after a workout last year.

ELLSWORTH — Law enforcement authorities and USD 327 officials have determined that a possible threat made Thursday at Ellsworth Junior/Senior High School was not credible.

In a news release Thursday morning, Ellsworth Police Chief Emil Halfhill wrote that on “November 14, 2019 a possible perceived threat was vocalized at the Ellsworth Junior/Senior High School. An investigation both by law enforcement and school staff was conducted and it was determined the threat was not credible. The juvenile who made the statement was removed from the school as a precaution.”

Halfhill noted that “law enforcement personnel will continue to monitor the situation and will provide extra patrol in and around the High School in the following days.”

The chief also reminded citizens that if they see something to say something.